Writing JIRA 4 gadgets

Gadgets are a big leap in JIRA's reporting features! The fact that JIRA is now an OpenSocial container lets its users add useful gadgets (both JIRA's own and third-party) into its dashboard. At the same time, gadgets written for JIRA can be added in other containers such as iGoogle, Gmail, and so on!

In this recipe, we will have a look at writing a very simple gadget; one that says "Hello from JTricks". By keeping the content simple, it will let us concentrate more on writing the gadget!

Before we start writing the gadget, it is probably worth understanding the key components of a JIRA gadget:

• Gadget XML is the most important part of a JIRA Gadget. It holds the specification of the gadget and includes the following:

  • Gadget Characteristics. This includes the title, description, author's name, and so on.

  • The Screenshot and a thumbnail image. Please note that the screenshot is not used within Atlassian containers such as JIRA or Confluence. We can optionally add it if we...