Automatically filling out scaffolder form with URL params
Published on October 28th, 2022If you have the need to more strictly control which values template users can input into the form, you can use URL request parameters to achieve that. Additionally, this allows you to construct URLs (either via automation or manually) which produce a pre-filled scaffolder template, possibly leaving the only action needed from the user to be a click of a button.
Structure
The full URL using query parameters in Roadie Scaffolder is as follows:
https://<your-tenant>.roadie.so/create/templates/default/<template name>?formData={"title"%3A"query-param-title"}
The query parameters ?formData={"title"%3A"Title from query params"}
in the end of the URL allow you to automatically fill in values of the form. Please see the below table for explanation of individual tokens in the query param.
Item | Example Value | Explanation |
---|---|---|
formData |
formData |
Key of the query param. formData object is used to fill out scaffolder template forms |
{"key"%3A"value"} |
{"title"%3A"Title from query params"} |
Value of the query param. A JSON object with invalid URL characters encoded. : encodes to %3A . |
Additional information
Using automatically filled out values is handy when wanting to direct users to use scaffolder templates with known good values. This also allows automation to be constructed around the scaffolder, where the automation can provide fully constructed scaffolder URLs to the user. You can also prevent user from modifying the form values inserted from query params by making the form fields readonly
. See below example of a minimal form which would be filled using query params defined in the above explanation.
Example template
---
apiVersion: scaffolder.backstage.io/v1beta3
kind: Template
metadata:
name: query-params-template
title: Query param values template
description: A software template to test filling the values via URL query params into a readonly field
spec:
owner: devops
type: catalog
parameters:
- title: Repository details
required:
- title
properties:
title: # Name of this property matches the query params used
title: Title
ui:readonly: true # marking this field readonly, so it can't be modified via the UI
type: string
description: Unique title of the next chapter in the recipe book
steps:
- id: log-message
name: Log Message
action: debug:log
input:
message: 'Hello, ${{ parameters.title }}!'