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docs: removing older documentation for now

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docs/features/software-templates/legacy.md
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---
id: template-legacy
title: Writing Templates (Legacy)
# prettier-ignore
description: Old documentation describing the backstage.io/v1alpha1 format of the Template Schema
---
## Kind: Template
Describes the following entity kind:
| Field | Value |
| ------------ | ----------------------- |
| `apiVersion` | `backstage.io/v1alpha1` |
| `kind` | `Template` |
A Template describes a skeleton for use with the Scaffolder. It is used for
describing what templating library is supported, and also for documenting the
variables that the template requires using
[JSON Forms Schema](https://jsonforms.io/).
Descriptor files for this kind may look as follows.
```yaml
apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: Template
metadata:
name: react-ssr-template
title: React SSR Template
description:
Next.js application skeleton for creating isomorphic web applications.
tags:
- recommended
- react
spec:
owner: web@example.com
templater: cookiecutter
type: website
path: '.'
schema:
required:
- component_id
- description
properties:
component_id:
title: Name
type: string
description: Unique name of the component
description:
title: Description
type: string
description: Description of the component
```
In addition to the [common envelope metadata](#common-to-all-kinds-the-metadata)
shape, this kind has the following structure.
### `apiVersion` and `kind` [required]
Exactly equal to `backstage.io/v1alpha1` and `Template`, respectively.
### `metadata.title` [required]
The nice display name for the template as a string, e.g. `React SSR Template`.
This field is required as is used to reference the template to the user instead
of the `metadata.name` field.
### `metadata.tags` [optional]
A list of strings that can be associated with the template, e.g.
`['recommended', 'react']`.
This list will also be used in the frontend to display to the user so you can
potentially search and group templates by these tags.
### `spec.type` [optional]
The type of component as a string, e.g. `website`. This field is optional but
recommended.
The software catalog accepts any type value, but an organization should take
great care to establish a proper taxonomy for these. Tools including Backstage
itself may read this field and behave differently depending on its value. For
example, a website type component may present tooling in the Backstage interface
that is specific to just websites.
The current set of well-known and common values for this field is:
- `service` - a backend service, typically exposing an API
- `website` - a website
- `library` - a software library, such as an npm module or a Java library
### `spec.templater` [required]
The templating library that is supported by the template skeleton as a string,
e.g `cookiecutter`.
Different skeletons will use different templating syntax, so it's common that
the template will need to be run with a particular piece of software.
This key will be used to identify the correct templater which is registered into
the `TemplatersBuilder`.
The values which are available by default are:
- `cookiecutter` - [cookiecutter](https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter).
### `spec.path` [optional]
The string location where the templater should be run if it is not on the same
level as the `template.yaml` definition, e.g. `./cookiecutter/skeleton`.
This will set the `cwd` when running the templater to the folder path that you
specify relative to the `template.yaml` definition.
This is also particularly useful when you have multiple template definitions in
the same repository but only a single `template.yaml` registered in backstage.
docs/features/software-templates/migrating-from-v1alpha1-to-v1beta2.md
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---
id: migrating-from-v1alpha1-to-v1beta2
title: Migrating to v1beta2 templates
# prettier-ignore
description: How to move your old templates from v1alpha1 to the more declarative v1beta2
---
# What's new?
Previously, the scaffolder was very restricted in what you could do when
creating new software components from templates. There were three scaffolding
steps which was pretty hard to extend and add new functionality to, difficult to
re-use logic between templates. There used to be a fixed pipeline of
`preparers`, `templaters`, and `publishers`, which were defined by the backend
and needed to be run for each template. This is now changed, to give the
template total control over what should be executed as part of the templating
run. This makes templates a little more declarative as you can now register
different `actions` or `functions` with the `scaffolder-backend` which you then
can decide how, and in what order, to run using the template definition YAML
file.
We've also made some improvements, and added some helpers to work with
cookiecutter. The skeleton for a template can now be stored in a different place
to where your entity definition is: previously you needed to have your
`template.yaml` next to the skeleton source (`{{cookiecutter.component_id}}`
directory), but now that's not the case. Part of the changes with the `v1beta2`
syntax is that you can grab your template source from any repository, and re-use
them between templates.
We've also renamed the `schema` property to `parameters` as this makes more
sense when using them as parameters to the actions or steps that you've setup
for your templates. There's the added benefit that you can now assign an array
to the `parameters` property, which will then give you multiple steps in the UI,
so you can split apart your input parameters and group them as needed rather
than having one long list of input fields.
## The `parameters` property
The `schema` key has now been renamed to `parameters` with a few more features.
You can pass an array now to break apart the input form into different steps in
the UI. You can also specify `ui:schema` fields that are passed along to
[`react-jsonschema-form`](https://rjsf-team.github.io/react-jsonschema-form/)
inline with the JSON schema.
```yaml
spec:
parameters:
- title: Fill in some steps
required:
- name
properties:
name:
title: Name
type: string
description: Unique name of the component
ui:autofocus: true
ui:options:
rows: 5
```
## The `steps` property
`v1beta2` template syntax introduces the new `steps` property, which is an array
of `actions` that the scaffolder will run in combination with the user input
that is declared in the `schema`. Actions look like the following:
```yaml
spec:
steps:
- id: publish # a unique id for the step, can be anything you like
name: Publish # a user friendly name for the step, this is what is shown in the frontend
action: publish:github # the action ID that has been registered with the scaffolder-backend
input: # parameters that are passed as input to the action handler function
allowedHosts: ['github.com']
description: 'This is {{ parameters.name }}' # handlebars templating is supported with the values from the parameters section in the same file.
repoUrl: '{{ parameters.repoUrl }}'
```
# Migrating a `v1alpha1` template
## The template definition (.yaml)
### `parameters`
Because of the changes to invert the control to the `template.yaml` definition
for running the workflow, we need to adjust the `schema` property and we also
now need to define what the template is actually going to do as part of the
template run.
A simple migration would move the following yaml:
```yaml
apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: Template
metadata:
name: react-ssr-template
title: React SSR Template
description: Create a website powered with Next.js
tags:
- recommended
- react
spec:
owner: web@example.com
templater: cookiecutter
type: website
path: '.'
schema:
required:
- component_id
- description
properties:
component_id:
title: Name
type: string
description: Unique name of the component
description:
title: Description
type: string
description: Help others understand what this website is for.
```
To something that looks like the following:
```yaml
apiVersion: backstage.io/v1beta2
kind: Template
metadata:
name: react-ssr-template
title: React SSR Template
description: Create a website powered with Next.js
tags:
- recommended
- react
spec:
owner: web@example.com
type: website
parameters:
- title: Add some input
required:
- component_id
- description
properties:
component_id:
title: Name
type: string
description: Unique name of the component
description:
title: Description
type: string
description: Help others understand what this website is for.
- title: Some more additional info that was previously provided automatically
required:
- owner
- repoUrl
properties:
owner:
title: Owner
type: string
description: Owner of the component
ui:field: OwnerPicker
ui:options:
allowedKinds:
- Group
- title: Choose a location
repoUrl:
title: Repository Location
type: string
ui:field: RepoUrlPicker
ui:options:
allowedHosts:
- github.com
```
There are a few things to note here. On the `alpha` version, the second step of
the template flow in the frontend was provided by Backstage for free, so we used
to collect the user input for the `owner` field and the `repositoryUrl` that you
were going to publish to. Now because `actions` can have any workflow they like,
it doesn't make sense to still provide these fields for every scaffolding
workflow, as you might not need these anymore. That's why we now manually add
those fields back into the template parameters that are shown to the user:
```yaml
- title: Some more additional info that was previously provided automatically
required:
- owner
- repoUrl
properties:
owner:
title: Owner
type: string
description: Owner of the component
ui:field: OwnerPicker
ui:options:
allowedKinds:
- Group
- title: Choose a location
repoUrl:
title: Repository Location
type: string
ui:field: RepoUrlPicker
ui:options:
allowedHosts:
- github.com
```
Maybe you also don't need to publish to `github.com`, you should replace this
with your VCS provider URL that is listed in your `integrations` config instead.
### `steps`
So now we should have all the required information that we need from the user in
a much more extensible way. We now need to tell the scaffolder what to do with
these parameters and what to do with the user input.
We've made templating using `cookiecutter` a little simpler. You don't need to
store the `cookiecutter` skeleton in the same directory as the `template.yaml`
definition, it can live wherever you like - maybe a shared repository somewhere
so you can re-use the skeletons but apply different actions for different
templates depending on your use case.
We also no longer need to have a directory called
`{{cookiecutter.component_id}}`. This is because now we can't ensure that
`component_id` will be a parameter that is provided from the frontend, this
could break `cookiecutter`. If your directory structure used to look like this:
```
my-awesome-template
-> {{cookiecutter.component_id}}
-> file.txt
-> some_more_files.ts
-> hooks
-> post_gen_project.sh
-> template.yaml
```
We now recommend that you move to the following structure:
```
my-awesome-template
-> skeleton
-> file.txt
-> some_more_files.ts
-> template.yaml
```
This migration renames the skeleton folder to something more semantic, and also
drops support for `cookiecutter` hooks. We've dropped support for `cookiecutter`
hooks for now, as hopefully everything that is stored in these hooks can be
moved to `actions` instead, and for security reasons, it's more secure to run
trusted code that you ship with Backstage as an action rather than some script
that can be pulled in from anywhere which doesn't get vetted first. It's a
pretty big security risk that those scripts will be run on Backstage instances
inside your infrastructure, especially `.sh` files.
If you really need hooks and can't find a suitable solution by using actions
please reach out to us through a ticket and we'll see what we can do to assist
:)
You'll notice that we removed the `templater` property from the `spec`
definition in the template `yaml`, so there's no way to define that this is a
`cookiecutter` `templater`.
We've created a built-in action that you can use which will when run, go grab a
directory from anywhere and run `cookiecutter` on top of it, and then extract
the contents into the working directory for the scaffolder.
Adding the `steps` for a simple template should look something like the
following:
```yaml
spec:
steps:
# this action will go use cookiecutter to template some files into the working directory
- id: template # an ID for the templating step
name: Create skeleton # A user friendly name for the action
action: fetch:cookiecutter
input:
url: ./skeleton # this is the directory for your skeleton files.
# If it's located next to the `template.yaml` then you can use a relative path,
# otherwise you can use absolute URLs that point at the VCS: https://github.com/backstage/backstage/tree/master/some_folder_somewhere
values:
# for each value that you need to pass to cookiecutter, they should be listed here and set in this values object.
# You can use the handlebars templating syntax to pull them from the input parameters listed in the same file
name: '{{ parameters.name }}'
owner: '{{ parameters.owner }}'
destination: '{{ parseRepoUrl parameters.repoUrl }}'
# this action is for publishing the working directory to the VCS
- id: publish
name: Publish
action: publish:github
input:
allowedHosts: ['github.com']
description: 'This is {{ parameters.name }}'
repoUrl: '{{ parameters.repoUrl }}'
# this action will then register the created component in Backstage
- id: register
name: Register
action: catalog:register
input:
repoContentsUrl: '{{ steps.publish.output.repoContentsUrl }}'
catalogInfoPath: '/catalog-info.yaml'
```
### `output`
Steps can output values, and so can the template itself. This is good for
returning values to the frontend, so we can make the buttons like
`Go to catalog` and `Go to repo` work correctly. You can add the following to
your `template.yaml` to make sure you return the right values from the steps:
```yaml
spec:
output:
remoteUrl: '{{ steps.publish.output.remoteUrl }}'
entityRef: '{{ steps.register.output.entityRef }}'
```
Or you can return a `links` array with text and a URL explicitly:
```yaml
spec:
output:
links:
- url: '{{steps.publish.output.remoteUrl}}'
title: 'Go to Repo'
```
## Questions?
If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to us on GitHub or
Discord and we will do our best to help!
docs/features/software-templates/migrating-from-v1beta2-to-v1beta3.md
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---
id: migrating-from-v1beta2-to-v1beta3
title: Migrating to v1beta3 templates
# prettier-ignore
description: How to migrate your existing templates to beta3 syntax
---
# What's new?
Well then, here we are! 🚀
Backstage has had many forms of templating languages throughout different
plugins and different systems. We've had `cookiecutter` syntax in templates, and
we also had `handlebars` templating in the `kind: Template`. Then we wanted to
remove the additional dependency on `cookiecutter` for `Software Templates` out
of the box, so we introduced `nunjucks` as an alternative in `fetch:template`
action which is based on the `jinja2` syntax so they're pretty similar. In an
effort to reduce confusion and unify on to one templating language, we're
officially deprecating support for `handlebars` templating in the
`kind: Template` entities with version `backstage.io/v1beta3` and moving to
using `nunjucks` instead.
This provides us a lot of built in `filters` (`handlebars` helpers), that as
Template authors will give you much more flexibility out of the box, and also
open up sharing of filters in the `entity` and the actual `skeleton` too, and
removing the slight differences between the two languages.
We've also removed a lot of the built in helpers that we shipped with
`handlebars`, as they're now supported as first class citizens by either
`nunjucks` or the new `scaffolder` when using `backstage.io/v1beta3`
`apiVersion`
The migration path is pretty simple, and we've removed some of the pain points
from writing the `handlebars` templates too. Let's go through what's new and how
to upgrade.
## `${{ }}` instead of `"{{ }}"`
One really big readability and cause for confusing was the fact that with
`handlebars` and `yaml` was that you always had to wrap your templating strings
in quotes in `yaml` so that it didn't try to parse it as a `json` object and
fail. This was pretty annoying, as it also meant that all things look like
strings. Now that's no longer the case, you can now remove the `""` and take
advantage of writing nice `yaml` files that just work.
```diff
spec:
steps:
input:
allowedHosts: ['github.com']
- description: 'This is {{ parameters.name }}'
+ description: This is ${{ parameters.name }}
- repoUrl: '{{ parameters.repoUrl }}'
+ repoUrl: ${{ parameters.repoUrl }}
```
## No more `eq` or `not` helper
These helpers are no longer needed with the more expressive `api` that
`nunjucks` provides. You can simply use the built-in `nunjucks` and `jinja2`
style operators.
```diff
spec:
steps:
input:
- if: '{{ eq parameters.value "backstage" }}'
+ if: ${{ parameters.value === "backstage" }}
...
```
And then for the `not`
```diff
spec:
steps:
input:
- if: '{{ not parameters.value "backstage" }}'
+ if: ${{ parameters.value !== "backstage" }}
...
```
Much better right? ✨
## No more `json` helper
This helper is no longer needed, as we've added support for complex values and
supporting the additional primitive values now rather than everything being a
`string`. This means that now that you can pass around `parameters` and it
should all work as expected and keep the type that has been declared in the
input schema.
```diff
spec:
parameters:
test:
type: number
name: Test Number
address:
type: object
required:
- line1
properties:
line1:🙏
type: string
name: Line 1
line2:
type: string
name: Line 2
steps:
- id: test step
action: run:something
input:
- address: '{{ json parameters.address }}'
+ address: ${{ parameters.address }}
- number: '{{ parameters.number }}'
+ number: ${{ parameters.number }} # this will now make sure that the type of number is a number now 🙏
```
## `parseRepoUrl` is now a `filter`
All calls to `parseRepoUrl` are now a `jinja2` `filter`, which means you'll need
to update the syntax.
```diff
spec:
steps:
input:
- repoUrl: '{{ parseRepoUrl parameters.repoUrl }}'
+ repoUrl: ${{ parameters.repoUrl | parseRepoUrl }}
...
```
Now we have complex value support here too, expect that this `filter` will go
away in future versions and the `RepoUrlPicker` will return an object so
`parameters.repoUrl` will already be a
`{ host: string; owner: string; repo: string }` 🚀
### Summary
Of course, we're always available on [discord](https://discord.gg/MUpMjP2) if
you're stuck or something's not working as expected. You can also
[raise an issue](https://github.com/backstage/backstage/issues/new/choose) with
feedback or bugs!