Web UI Extensions

Developing a Page Extension

In TeamCity page extension is a plugin written for a specific extension point and extending existing web page functionality. In most cases page extensions only provide some additional information and a simple UI that does not require communication with the server.

TeamCity contains a number of pages that can be extended in such a way. These pages provide one or more extension points which are contained in the PlaceId class. There are also two special extension points ALL_PAGES_HEADER and ALL_PAGES_FOOTER. These extension points allow you to insert your plugin content on every page (except external pages not requiring authentication like login) in the header and/or footer.

To write a page extension:

1. Choose an extension point.

2. Implement interface jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PageExtension4.5.1 (or you can use/extend jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.SimplePageExtension4.5.1 class).

3. Attach the implemented interface to a chosen extension point (ask Spring to provide you jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PagePlaces4.5.1 interface): pagePlaces.getPlaceById(PlaceId.SOME_EXTENSION_POINT).addPageExtension(myExtension)

The jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PageExtension4.5.1 interface has the following important methods that require your attention:

• getIncludeUrl is a mandatory method. You must specify its includeUrl parameter — an URL that is used to retrieve your extension content. This URL must point to a JSP file or to a DevelopCustomController.

• isAvailable(HttpServletRequest) method is called to determine whether page extension content should be shown or not.

• fillModel(Map, HttpServletRequest) method is required when you want to pass some parameters to your JSP. The method will be called before actual JSP is shown and a map of parameters will be passed to it. You can add parameters to this map and then in JSP you will be able to retrieve them by their names from the request scope.

jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.SimplePageExtension4.5.1 class requires jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PagePlaces4.5.1 interface as parameter, plus jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PlaceId4.5.1 specification. Given that PlaceId is specified, you can call method register() to register this extension. You can also use SimplePageExtension class to specify your extension in Spring xml descriptor, because it has setters for all main parameters.

Developing a Custom Tab

A number of extension points in TeamCity are custom tab extensions. For example, PlaceId.BUILD_RESULTS_TAB identifies custom tab on build results page.

To add your own tab you can extend SimplePageExtension and additionally implement jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.CustomTab4.5.1 interface with two new methods:

• CustomTab.getTabId() returns unique identifier of the tab among all of the tabs in this extension point.

• CustomTab.getTabTitle() returns title to show in the tab.

Processing of custom tabs has some differences from usual DevelopPageExtention:

• If jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PageExtensionisAvailable(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest)4.5.1 method returns false then tab will not be shown and user will not be able to switch to it. So if your tab should always be visible return true in this method.

• PageExtension.fillModel(Map, HttpServletRequest) method is called only if the tab is selected by the user.

In all other respects custom tabs are processed as usual DevelopPageExtention.

Developing a Custom Controller

Sometimes page extensions provide interaction with user and require communication with server. For example, your page extension can show a form with a "Submit" button. In this case in addition to writing your own page extension, you should provide a controller which will process requests from such forms, and use path to this controller in the form action attribute (the path is a part of URL without context path and query string).

To register your controller:

• use jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.WebControllerManagerregisterController(java.lang.String, org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller)4.5.1 method with the following arguments:

  • First argument of this method (String) is a path to which the controller will be bound. The path must end with ".html" suffix, for example: /myplugin/mycontroller.html.

  • Second argument (Controller) is the controller itself.

To simplify things your controller can extend our jetbrains.buildServer.controllers.BaseController4.5.1 class and implement BaseController.doHandle(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse) method.

With the custom controller you can provide completely new pages. Links to such pages you can add by means of DevelopPageExtention.

Obtaining paths to JSP files

Plugin resources are unpacked to <TeamCity web application>/plugins directory when server starts. However to construct paths to your JSP or images in Java it is recommended to use jetbrains.buildServer.web.openapi.PluginDescriptor4.5.1. This descriptor can be obtained as any other Spring service.

In JSP files to construct paths to your resources you can use ${teamcityPluginResourcesPath}. This attribute is provided by TeamCity automatically, you can use it like this:

<img src="${teamcityPluginResourcesPath}your_image.gif" height="16" width="16" border="0">

Classes and interfaces from TeamCity web open API