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Generating Backstage Components

The Backstage Controller generates Backstage components and templates for Promises and Resource Requests.

Prerequisites​

Authenticating against the image registry​

Both the Backstage Controller image and the SKE Backstage Generator image used by the Controller are hosted in a private registry, to access these images when Deploying and using the Backstage Controller deployment, you will need to authenticate using the token you have been provided with. You can define your authentication credentials via a docker-registry secret named syntasso-registry:

kubectl create secret docker-registry syntasso-registry \
  --docker-server=registry.syntasso.io \
  --docker-username=syntasso-pkg \
  --docker-password=YOUR_TOKEN \
  --namespace kratix-platform-system

The above command creates a Kubernetes Secret in namespace kratix-platform-system. For any resource requests created in other namespaces, you need to create the same registry secret in them as well.

SKE Backstage plugins​

The generated Backstage Templates reference an action from the ske-backend Backstage plugin, this action is used to create a Resource Request. The generated Components are also used by the ske-frontend Backstage plugin to display Promise and Resource metadata.

In order to utilise the Templates and Components, you should also install both the ske-backend and ske-frontend plugins into your Backstage instance.

See Configuring the Plugins for installation instructions.

Backstage Destination​

You must have a Destination created with the environment: backstage label. See the Kratix Backstage docs for setup instructions.

warning

You will need SKE 0.28.0 or later for Backstage Controller to work.

Installing the Backstage Controller​

The Controller is released separately from SKE. Its releases can be found here.

You can apply the Controller by installing the distribution at the desired version:

kubectl apply -f http://syntasso-enterprise-releases.s3-website.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/#backstage-controller/<VERSION>/backstage-controller.yaml

How does it work?​

The SKE Backstage Controller creates a Workflow that automatically generates the Backstage components and templates for your Promise. This Workflow runs in addition to the Configure Workflow for your Promises and Requests.

Promise Configure​

In a Promise Configure workflow, two Backstage manifests will be generated:

  • Promise Component: A Backstage Component representing the Promise.
  • Promise Template: A Backstage Template representing the Promise API (i.e. the CRD for Resources created from this Promise).

Resource Configure​

In a Resource Configure workflow, a single Backstage manifest will be generated:

  • Resource Component: A Backstage Component representing the Resource.

Check the YAML File Format for examples of these manifests

Labelling Promises for automatic file generation​

To generate Backstage Components and Template for your Promise, as well as Components for requests for that Promise, label your Promise with kratix.io/backstage: true.

kubectl label promises PROMISE_NAME kratix.io/backstage=true

Or add the label to the Promise spec:

apiVersion: platform.kratix.io/v1alpha1
kind: Promise
metadata:
  name: my-promise
  labels:
    kratix.io/backstage: "true"

Customize Backstage Components​

You can customize the automatically generated Backstage Components and Templates by creating BackstageEntityCustomization:

apiVersion: platform.kratix.io/v1alpha1
kind: BackstageEntityCustomization
metadata:
  name: my-customization
spec:
  entityGenerationOptions:
    promise:
      component: # options for the generated Promise Component
        name: my-name # Value for metadata.name
        title: my-title # Value for metadata.title
        description: my-description # Value for metadata.description
        tags: tag1,tag2 # Values for metadata.tags
        type: my-type # Value for spec.type
        lifecycle: my-lifeCycle # Value for spec.lifecycle
        owner: my-owner # Value for spec.owner
        system: my-system # Value for spec.system
        subComponentOf: parent-resource # Value for spec.subcomponentOf
        providesAPIs: api1,api2 # Values for spec.providesAPIs
        consumesAPIs: api3,api4 # Values for spec.consumesAPIs
        dependsOn: dependency1,dependency2 # Values for spec.dependsOn
      template: # options for the generated Promise Template
        hideNamespace: false # Whether to hide the namespace field
        defaultNamespace: default # Default namespace to use
        namespaceFieldTitle: Namespace # Title for the namespace field
        namespaceFieldDescription: "Your team's namespace" # Description for the namespace field
        singleSpecPage: false # Whether to generate a single spec page for the template
        title: my-title # Value for metadata.title
        description: my-description # Value for metadata.description
        tags: tag1,tag2 # Values for metadata.tags
        type: my-type # Value for spec.type
        lifecycle: my-lifeCycle # Value for spec.lifecycle
        owner: my-owner # Value for spec.owner
    resource:
      component:
        name: my-name # Value for metadata.name
        title: my-title # Value for metadata.title
        description: my-description # Value for metadata.description
        tags: tag1,tag2 # Values for metadata.tags
        type: my-type # Value for spec.type
        lifecycle: my-lifeCycle # Value for spec.lifecycle
        owner: my-owner # Value for spec.owner
        system: my-system # Value for spec.system
        subComponentOf: parent-resource # Value for spec.subcomponentOf
        providesAPIs: api1,api2 # Values for spec.providesAPIs
        consumesAPIs: api3,api4 # Values for spec.consumesAPIs
        dependsOn: dependency1,dependency2 # Values for spec.dependsOn
  destinationSelectors: # optional
  - matchLabels:
      environment: backstage
  containers: # optional
    - name: add-backstage-group
      image: ghcr.io/syntasso/run-customization:v0.0.1

Once you have created the BackstageEntityCustomization, you can label your Promise with kratix.io/backstage-customization: my-customization to apply the customization to the Promise and its Resource Requests:

kubectl label promises PROMISE_NAME kratix.io/backstage-customization=my-customization
tip

Backstage Customizations are cluster-wide resources, so ensure create them with unique names

Custom containers​

The containers defined in the customization will run after the backstage-gen container which generates the Components and Templates. They can be used to modify the existing catalog-info.yaml file created by the ske-backstage-generator or it can generate new files. This customization will apply to all Promises with label kratix.io/backstage: "true" as well as Resource Requests for these promises.

info

If you want to a particular Resource Request to not have a Backstage Component generated, you can label the Resource Request with kratix.io/backstage: "false".

If you want to edit the Entities or generate different files based on whether the Workflow is running for a Promise or Resource Request, the container can query the KRATIX_WORKFLOW_TYPE environment variable. For Promises, this is equal to promise-backstage-gen and for resources, resource-backstage-gen.

Destination Selectors​

By default, Destination selectors defined in the customization will apply to all generated Backstage components. You can use these to make sure that generated components are only scheduled to your Backstage destinations.