At a Glance
Take home message: Atlassian Connect for Bitbucket provides an integration architecture that embeds add-ons within the user interface, creating a more unified workflow.
Why read this blog post: You want a straightforward way to build and implement add ons in Bitbucket that are deeply integrated.
What’s new: Atlassian has re-engineered Bitbucket into a platform that helps remove ‘interrupt-driven’ workflows and bring all the information to ship software in one place.
Read On
More than 3 million developers and 450,000 teams use Bitbucket to manage and collaborate on source code. However collaboration is only one piece in the software development puzzle.
Shipping software involves ‘context switching’ using tools that don’t integrate tightly. When integrations are made, toolchains have to be maintained on an ongoing basis with integration code that has to be regularly re-written. This is a challenge that development teams face every day. Most software integration architectures only partially solve the problem.
Until now.
Atlassian Connect for Bitbucket provides an integration architecture that embeds add-ons right within the Atlassian UI.
How does Atlassian Connect for Bitbucket work?
Atlassian Connect add-ons are web applications that operate remotely over HTTP and can be written with any programming language and web framework. They have three major capabilities:
- Insert content in certain defined places in the Atlassian application’s UI.
- Make calls to the Atlassian application’s REST API.
- Listen and respond to WebHooks fired by the Atlassian application.
To an end user, add-ons appear as a fully integrated part of the Atlassian application. Once an add-on is registered with the application, features are delivered from the UI and workflows of the host application. This deep level of integration is part of what makes Atlassian Connect add-ons so powerful.
Why build using Atlassian Connect for Bitbucket?
There are at least three reasons:
- Atlassian Connect provides much deeper integration than what is offered by standard REST APIs and webhooks
- Add-ons are straightforward to implement. You can build an add-on in any language, on any stack, using any interface.
- Great add-ons can be distributed to more than three million developers and 450,000 teams using Bitbucket.
Is it secure?
Atlassian Connect relies on HTTPS and JWT authentication to secure communication between an add-on, the Atlassian product and the user. Add-ons actions are constrained by well-defined permissions and an add-on can only perform activities it declares in its descriptor. These permissions are granted by Atlassian application administrators when they install an add-on. These permissions help ensure the security and stability of cloud instances.
Want to know more? Contact us here.
