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    JIRA Development Cookbook
    JIRA Development Cookbook
    JIRA Development Cookbook
    Ebook1,248 pages6 hours

    JIRA Development Cookbook

    By Jobin Kuruvilla

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This book is part of Packt's Cookbook series. A Packt Cookbook contains step-by-step recipes for solutions to the most important problems you face when working with a topic. Inside this Cookbook you will find: A straightforward and easy-to-follow format, A selection of the most important tasks and problems ,Carefully organized instructions for solving the problem efficiently, Clear explanations of what you did Details for applying the solution to other situations If you are a JIRA developer or project manager who wants to fully exploit the exciting capabilities of JIRA, then this is the perfect book for you.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPackt Publishing
    Release dateNov 24, 2011
    ISBN9781849681810
    JIRA Development Cookbook

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      JIRA Development Cookbook - Jobin Kuruvilla

      Table of Contents

      JIRA Development Cookbook

      Credits

      About the Author

      Acknowledgment

      About the Reviewers

      www.PacktPub.com

      Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

      Why Subscribe?

      Free Access for Packt account holders

      Instant Updates on New Packt Books

      Preface

      What this book covers

      What you need for this book

      Who this book is for

      Conventions

      Reader feedback

      Customer support

      Downloading the example code for this book

      Errata

      Piracy

      Questions

      1. Plugin Development Process

      Introduction

      What is a JIRA plugin?

      The plugin development process

      Atlassian plugin exchange

      Troubleshooting

      Setting up the development environment

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Proxy settings for Maven

      Using local Maven

      Configuring IDEs to use SDK

      Troubleshooting

      See also

      Creating a skeleton plugin

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      One step to your skeleton plugin

      Creating an Eclipse project

      See also

      Deploying a plugin

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Using a specific version of JIRA

      Reusing the configurations in each run

      Troubleshooting

      Making changes and re-deploying a plugin

      How to do it...

      Debugging in Eclipse

      See also

      Testing and debugging

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Using custom data for Integration/Functional Tests

      Testing against different version of JIRA/Tomcat

      See also

      2. Understanding Plugin Framework

      Introduction

      JIRA Architecture

      Third-party components

      Webwork

      Seraph

      OSUser

      PropertySet

      OSWorkflow

      OfBiz Entity Engine

      Apache Lucene

      Atlassian Gadget JavaScript Framework

      Quartz

      Architecture explained…

      Authentication and user management

      Property management

      Presentation

      Database

      Workflows

      Searching

      Scheduled jobs

      Plugins

      Types of plugin modules

      Reporting

      Workflows

      Custom fields

      Searching

      Links and tabs

      Remote invocation

      Actions and components

      Other plugin modules

      What goes into atlassian-plugin.xml?

      Working with the Plugins1 and Plugins2 versions

      Development

      Installation

      JIRA System plugins

      Converting plugins from v1 to v2

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Adding resources into plugins

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Adding web resources into plugins

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Web resource contexts

      Turning off batchmode

      See also

      Building JIRA from source

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Building JIRA dependencies

      See also

      Adding new webwork actions to JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Adding new commands to the action

      See also

      Extending a webwork action in JIRA

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      3. Working with Custom Fields

      Introduction

      Writing a simple custom field

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      Custom field searchers

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Dealing with custom fields on an issue

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Programming custom field options

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      See also

      Overriding validation of custom fields

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      See also

      Customizing the change log value

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Migrating from one custom field type to another

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Changing the type of a custom field

      See also

      Making custom fields sortable

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      Displaying custom fields on subtask columns

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      User and date fields from 4.1.x

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Adding custom fields to notification mails

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding help text for a custom field

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Removing the 'none' option from a select field

      How to do it...

      There's more...

      Reloading velocity changes without restart (auto reloading)

      See also

      Making the custom field project importable

      How to do it...

      See also

      Changing the size of a text area custom field

      How to do it...

      See also

      4. Programming Workflows

      Introduction

      Writing a workflow condition

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Writing a workflow validator

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Writing a workflow post function

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Editing an active workflow

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Modifying workflows in JIRA database

      Making an issue editable/non-editable based on workflow status

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Including/excluding resolutions for specific transitions

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Permissions based on workflow status

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Internationalization in workflow transitions

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Obtaining available workflow actions programmatically

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Getting the Action IDs, given name

      Programmatically progressing on workflows

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Obtaining workflow history from the database

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Re-ordering workflow actions in JIRA

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Creating common transitions in workflows

      How to do it...

      How i works...

      Jelly escalation

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      5. Gadgets and Reporting in JIRA

      Introduction

      Writing a JIRA report

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Reports in Excel format

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      Data validation in JIRA reports

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Restricting access to reports

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Object configurable parameters for reports

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Creating a pie chart in JIRA

      Getting ready…

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      Writing JIRA 4 gadgets

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Invoking REST services from gadgets

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Configuring user preferences in gadgets

      Getting ready...

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      Accessing gadgets outside of JIRA

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      6. The Power of JIRA Searching

      Introduction

      Writing a JQL function

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Sanitizing JQL functions

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Adding a search request view

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Smart querying using quick search

      How to do it...

      There's more...

      Searching in plugins

      How to do it...

      There's more...

      See also

      Parsing a JQL query in plugins

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Linking directly to search queries

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Index and de-index programmatically

      How to do it...

      See also

      Managing filters programmatically

      How to do it...

      See also

      Subscribing to a filter

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      7. Programming Issues

      Introduction

      Creating an issue from a plugin

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Using IssueManager to create the issue

      Creating subtasks on an issue

      How to do it...

      See also

      Updating an issue

      How to do it...

      Deleting an issue

      How to do it...

      Adding new issue operations

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      See also

      Conditions on issue operations

      Getting ready...

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Working with attachments

      Getting ready...

      How to do it...

      Creating an attachment

      Reading attachments on an issue

      Deleting an attachment

      There's more...

      Time tracking and worklog management

      Getting ready...

      How to do it...

      Auto adjusting the remaining estimate

      Logging work and retaining the remaining estimate

      Logging work with a new remaining estimate

      Logging work and adjusting the remaining estimate by a value

      How it works...

      There's more

      Updating worklogs

      Deleting worklogs

      Auto Adjusting remaining estimate

      Deleting a worklog and retaining the remaining estimate

      Deleting a worklog with a new remaining estimate

      Working with comments on issues

      How to do it...

      Creating comments on issues

      Creating comments on an issue and restricting it to a project role or group

      Updating comments

      Deleting comments

      Programming Change Logs

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Programming issue links

      Getting Ready...

      How to do it...

      There's more...

      Deleting Issue Links

      Retrieving Issue Links on an issue

      Validations on issue linking

      Getting Ready...

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Discarding fields while cloning

      Getting ready...

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      JavaScript tricks on issue fields

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      8. Customizing the UI

      Introduction

      Changing the basic look and feel

      How to do it...

      Adding new web sections in the UI

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Adding new web items in the UI

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Adding conditions for web fragments

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Creating new velocity context for web fragments

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding a new drop-down menu on the top navigation bar

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Dynamic creation of web items

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding new tabs in the View Issue screen

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding new tabs in the Browse Project screen

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Creating Project Tab Panel using fragments

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding new tabs in the Browse Version screen

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding new tabs in the Browse Component screen

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Extending a webwork action to add UI elements

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Displaying dynamic notifications/warnings on issues

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Re-ordering Issue Operations in the View Issue page

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Re-ordering fields in the View Issue page

      How to do it...

      9. Remote Access to JIRA

      Introduction

      Creating a SOAP client

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating an issue via SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Working with custom fields and SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating an issue with custom field values

      Updating custom fields on an issue

      Browsing custom fields on an issue

      Attachments and SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Worklogs and time tracking via SOAP

      Getting ready...

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Commenting on an issue via SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      User and group management via SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Progressing an issue in workflow using SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Managing versions via SOAP

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Administration methods in SOAP API

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Deploy a SOAP service in JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Deploy a XML-RPC service within JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      See also

      Writing a Java XML-RPC client

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Expose services and data entities as REST APIs

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Writing Java client for REST API

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      10. Dealing with a Database

      Introduction

      Extending JIRA DB with custom schema

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Accessing DB entities from plugins

      How to do it...

      Reading from a database

      Writing a new record

      Updating a record

      Persisting plugin information in JIRA DB

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Using active objects to store data

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Accessing JIRA configuration properties

      How to do it...

      Getting database connection for JDBC calls

      How to do it...

      Migrating a custom field from one type to another

      How to do it...

      Retrieving issue information from a Database

      How to do it...

      There's more...

      Retrieving custom field details from a database

      How to do it...

      Retrieving permissions on issues from a database

      How to do it...

      Retrieving workflow details from a database

      How to do it...

      Updating issue status in a database

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Retrieving users and groups from a database

      How to do it...

      Dealing with Change history in a database

      How to do it...

      11. Useful Recipes

      Introduction

      Writing a service in JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      See also

      Adding configurable parameters to a service

      How to do it…

      How it works...

      See also

      Writing scheduled tasks in JIRA

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Writing listeners in JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Handling, enabling, and disabling of plugins

      Customizing e-mail content

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Advanced Customization—adding custom field information

      Redirecting to different page in webwork actions

      How to do it...

      Adding custom behavior for user details

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Deploying a servlet in JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding shared parameters to Servlet Context

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Writing a Servlet Context Listener

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Using filters to intercept queries in JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Adding and importing components in JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Exposing components to other plugins

      Importing public components

      Using service properties in components

      How it works...

      Adding new module types to JIRA

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Creating modules using the new module type

      Using the new modules created

      How it works...

      Enabling access logs in JIRA

      How to do it...

      Enabling Access logs prior to JIRA 4.x

      How it works...

      Enabling SQL logging in JIRA

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Overriding JIRA's default components in plugins

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      There's more...

      Overriding by modifying JIRA code

      Overriding by extending PicoContainer

      Creating issues and comments from e-mail

      How to do it...

      How it works...

      Internationalization in webwork plugins

      How to do it...

      Sharing common libraries across v2 plugins

      Getting ready

      How to do it...

      Operations using direct HTML links

      How to do it...

      Index

      JIRA Development Cookbook

      JIRA Development Cookbook

      Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

      Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

      Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

      First published: November 2011

      Production Reference: 1161111

      Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

      Livery Place

      35 Livery Street

      Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

      ISBN 978-1-84968-180-3

      www.packtpub.com

      Cover Image by Sandeep Babu (<sandyjb@gmail.com>)

      Credits

      Author

      Jobin Kuruvilla

      Reviewers

      Fidel Castro Armario

      Justin Koke

      Dawid Kowalski

      Sergey Markovich

      Marcin Zręda

      Acquisition Editor

      Amey Kanse

      Development Editor

      Alina Lewis

      Technical Editors

      Sakina Kaydawala

      Mohd. Sahil

      Copy Editors

      Leonard D'Silva

      Brandt D'Mello

      Laxmi Subramanian

      Project Coordinator

      Leena Purkait

      Proofreader

      Lesley Harrison

      Indexer

      Tejal Daruwale

      Graphics

      Valentina D'Silva

      Production Coordinator

      Aparna Bhagat

      Cover Work

      Aparna Bhagat

      About the Author

      Jobin Kuruvilla is an Atlassian Consultant who is experienced in customizing JIRA and writing JIRA plugins for various customers. He is working with Go2group, a premier Atlassian partner and is involved in managing Atlassian products for big enterprises to small starter license installations.

      Jobin had started his career as a Java/J2EE Developer in one of the biggest IT companies in India. After spending the initial years in the SOA world, he got hooked into this amazing product called JIRA, which he came across during the evaluation of third-party products for a requirements management solution. Soon Jobin realized the power of JIRA and pledged to spread the word. He has been doing it ever since, and reckons there is a long way to go!

      Jobin runs a website named J Tricks – Little JIRA Tricks (http://www.j-tricks.com). He has written numerous tutorials to help the developer community, who he thinks has contributed immensely to his personal development. It is indeed those tutorials that sowed the first seeds for this book.

      Acknowledgment

      No book is the product of just the author – he just happens to be the one with his name on the cover. 

      A number of people contributed to the success of this book, and it would take more space than I have to thank each one individually.

      First of all, thanks to the Almighty God for helping me to sail through the difficulties in this short life and for making my life as wonderful as it is now.

      The next biggest thanks go to my Acquisition editor, Amey Kanse, who patiently explained to me every single doubt I threw at him and made me feel at home through the entire process of writing this book. Thank you, Amey, for believing in me and for being a wonderful guide through this process. Special thanks should go to Mary Nadar, who recognized the author in me, Leena Purkait, the Project coordinator for this book, and Alina Lewis, the Development editor of the book. Also thanks to the entire Packt Publishing team for working so diligently to help bring out a high quality product.

      It is amazing to work with a team of talented developers and technical geeks. I am fortunate to work with such teams throughout my career, and it just makes you fall in love with the work. In particular, thanks are due to each and every member of the 'STORM team', 'PD&B team', and 'RAMP team'. Your encouragement and support were invaluable to me – you guys rock!

      I must also thank the talented JIRA community who are instrumental in helping each other, sharing solutions, being active on the forums, running user groups, and what not. I am just one of the many who benefited.

      Before I wind up, thank you, Atlassian, for giving us JIRA and a set of other wonderful products. You don't realize how much easier you are making our lives!

      Last, but not least, a big thank you to the Go2group for the reception that you have given, the support extended in writing this book, and for believing in my capabilities.

      About the Reviewers

      Fidel Castro Armario has been working for Spanish Public Administration (Junta de Andalucía) since 2000 as a Consultant and Software Engineer. During his career, he specialized in business process design, implementation and optimization, and software QA. Since 2008, he is focused on designing and implementing a whole system of processes based on JIRA for IT departments management, IT services outsourcing, and CRM implementation.

      He has a passion for designing highly detailed and accurate workflows, with self-explanatory interfaces, which are teamwork-oriented and aimed for work efficiency. He employs for his work a self-developed methodology, enabling implementation of high complexity processes, keeping maintenance and administration cost at low levels.

      JIRA Workflow Toolbox plugin is a comprehensive workflow extension developed by Fidel as support for his work and is available at the Atlassian Plugin Exchange site.

      My deepest gratitude goes to so many people who have trusted me and supported my efforts. Without them, I couldn't have carried out any of my projects on JIRA.

      I would like to dedicate my work to my wife, Carmen, and my son, Felipe, for their support and understanding for the many hours I devoted to review this book.

      Dawid Kowalski is a third year student at Poznań University of Technology in Poland. He is currently employed at Wolters Kluwer as a Software Developer and works on JIRA-related projects. He is ambitious, hard-working, and organized. He is active in the scientific club and works there on optimization problems. He is also the captain of the Imagine Cup 2010 and 2011 semi-finalist team.

      I would like to thank my closest friends and family for continuous support and encouragement.

      Sergey Markovich is currently a co-founder of Plugenta Labs, a company focusing on the development of add-ons to enterprise software and an independent Atlassian JIRA and Confluence contractor.

      In the past, a code wizard in several multinational corporations and startups and a Bachelor in Computer Science.

      I want to thank my mom and dad for giving me birth and growing me up the way you did it. Everything I have in my life I it owe to you.

      I also want to say warm words to everybody involved with Plugenta Labs. It's a real pleasure to work with you and I keep learning from you every day.

      Marcin Zręda specializes in Business Analysis and Quality Assurance. He has many years of experience as a programmer and designer. He is the author of many articles on JIRA and the owner of the http://www.testandtry.com blog. He has implemented JIRA for many departments for more than 600 employees. He is currently directing the department of business analysis for a large international company.

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      This book is dedicated to

      My wife Anumol, the joy of my heart, my best friend for years who even chose to give up her career for the company of this mortal. Anu, I wouldn't be in this place if not for your unconditional love and care.

      My sweet little daughter Anna, the light of my world. I am sure you will read this one day and understand what I was doing all night scratching my head in front of the laptop instead of changing your nappies!

      My parents, Alice and Kuruvilla, who brought me up in a village not many people have heard of. Nothing beats the pain and suffering they have undergone in the process

      My sister, Juby Sara, the best sister in the world. It is a privilege watching you follow my footsteps outshining me all the way!

      My friends from TKM and JNV Kottayam who dared me to dream and then helped me to achieve them. You guys are the best.

      This book would not have been possible without your love and understanding.

      A big thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have nothing to give back, but my love and prayers.

      Preface

      This book is your one-stop resource for mastering JIRA extension and customization. You will learn how to create your own JIRA plugins, customize the look-and-feel of your JIRA UI, work with workflows, issues, custom fields, and much more.

      The book starts with recipes on simplifying the plugin development process followed by a complete chapter dedicated to the plugin framework to master plugins in JIRA.

      Then we will move on to writing custom field plugins to create new field types or custom searchers. We then learn how to program and customize workflows to transform JIRA into a user-friendly system.

      We will then look at customizing the various searching aspects of JIRA such as JQL, searching in plugins, managing filters, and so on.

      Then the book steers towards programming issues; that is, creating/editing/deleting issues, creating new issue operations, managing the other various operations available on issues using the JIRA APIs, and so on.

      In the latter half of the book, you will learn how to customize JIRA by adding new tabs, menus, and web items, communicate with JIRA using the REST, SOAP, or XML/RPC interfaces, and work with the JIRA database.

      The book ends with a chapter on useful and general JIRA recipes.

      What this book covers

      Chapter 1, Plugin Development Process, covers the fundamentals of JIRA plugin development process. It covers, in detail, the setting up of a development environment, creating a plugin, deploying it, and testing it.

      Chapter 2, Understanding Plugin Framework, covers, in detail, the JIRA architecture and looks at the various plugin points. It also looks at how to build JIRA from source and extend or override the existing JIRA functionalities.

      Chapter 3, Working with Custom Fields, looks at programmatically creating custom fields in JIRA, writing custom field searchers, and various other useful recipes related to custom fields.

      Chapter 4, Programming Workflows, looks at the various ways of programming the JIRA workflows. It includes writing new conditions, validators, post functions, and so on, and contains related recipes that are useful in extending the workflows.

      Chapter 5, Gadgets and Reporting in JIRA, covers the reporting capabilities of JIRA. It looks at writing reports, dashboard gadgets, among others in detail.

      Chapter 6, The Power of JIRA Searching, covers the searching capabilities of JIRA and how it can be extended using the JIRA APIs.

      Chapter 7, Programming Issues, looks at the various APIs and methods used for managing issues programmatically. It covers the CRUD operations, working with attachments, programming change logs and issue links, time tracking, among others.

      Chapter 8, Customizing the UI, looks at the various ways of extending and modifying the JIRA user interface.

      Chapter 9, Remote Access to JIRA, looks at the remote capabilities of JIRA – REST, SOAP, and XML/RPC, and the ways of extending them.

      Chapter 10, Dealing with the Database, looks at the database architecture of JIRA and covers the major tables in detail. It also covers the different ways to extend the storage and access or modify the data from plugins.

      Chapter 11, Useful Recipes, covers a selected list of useful recipes which do not belong in the preceding categories, but are powerful enough to get your attention! Read away!!

      What you need for this book

      This book focuses on JIRA development. You will need the following software as a bare minimum:

      JIRA 4.x+

      JAVA 1.6+

      Maven 2.x

      Atlassian Plugin SDK

      An IDE of your choice. The examples in the book use Eclipse and SQL Developer.

      Some of the recipes are too simple to use the fully-fledged plugin development process, and you will see this highlighted as you read through the book!

      Who this book is for

      If you are a JIRA developer or project manager who wants to fully exploit the exciting capabilities of JIRA, then this is the perfect book for you.

      Conventions

      In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

      Code words in text are shown as follows: The fields oldvalue and newvalue are populated using the method getChangelogValue.

      A block of code is set as follows:

          ChangeItem table-name=changeitem package-

          name=>

              id type=numeric/>

              group col-name=groupid type=numeric/>

             

         

      When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

          ChangeItem table-name=changeitem package-

          name=>

              oldvalue type=extremely-long/>        

       

             

         

      Any command line input or output is written as follows:

      maven war:webapp

      New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: You must have noticed the new View Issue page.

      Note

      Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

      Tip

      Tips and tricks appear like this.

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      Downloading the example code for this book

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      Questions

      You can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

      Chapter 1. Plugin Development Process

      In this chapter, we will cover:

      Setting up the development environment

      Creating a Skeleton plugin

      Deploying a JIRA plugin

      Testing and debugging

      Introduction

      Atlassian JIRA, as we all know, is primarily an Issue Tracking and Project Tracking System. What many people do not know, though, is the power of its numerous customization capabilities, using which we can turn it into a different system altogether! Maybe a helpdesk system, a user story management system, an online approval process, and a lot more. This is in addition to the issue tracking and project tracking capabilities for which JIRA, arguably, is the best player in the market.

      So what are these customizations? How can we convert the JIRA we know into a product we want? Or maybe just add extra functionalities that are specific to our organization?

      The answer to these questions probably can be summarized in a single word—plugins. JIRA has given the power to its users to write plugins and customize the functionality in a way they find suitable.

      But is that the only way? Definitely not! JIRA itself provides a lot of customization options through its user interface, and in more demanding cases, using property files like jira-application.properties. In some cases, you will also find yourself modifying some of the JIRA core files to tweak functionality or to work around a problem. We will see more of that in the chapters to come but the best entry point to JIRA customizations are plugins. And that is where we start our cookbook, before we move on to the in-depth details.

      What is a JIRA plugin?

      So, what is a JIRA plugin? JIRA itself is a web application written in Java. But that doesn't mean you need to know JAVA to write a plugin, though in most cases you will need to. You might end up writing a simple descriptor file to add few links here and there. If that makes the non-Java developer in you happy, watch out for the different plugin modules JIRA supports.

      A JIRA plugin is a JAR file that has a mandatory plugin descriptor and some optional Java classes and velocity templates. The velocity templates are used to render the HTML pages associated with your plugin, but in some cases, you might also want to introduce JSPs to make use of some pre-existing templates in JIRA. JSPs, as opposed to velocity templates, cannot be embedded in the plugin, but instead they should be dropped into the appropriate folders in the JIRA web application.

      The plugin descriptor, the only mandatory part of a plugin, is an XML file

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