Building your first plugin

When you have installed the Atlassian SDK, you can start building your first plugin. We will be building a new Confluence macro, which can be used to format content.

We will take a look at:

• The macro interface, which is the base of all macros

• The xhtml-macro module

• Adding resources, such as a stylesheet, to your plugin

We will be building a macro that displays links as buttons.

Creating the plugin project

First, we have to create our plugin skeleton using the Atlassian SDK and load our new project into Eclipse.

1. Open a command prompt and navigate to the location for you new plugin.

2. Enter the following command to create a new Confluence plugin:

   atlas-create-confluence-plugin
   

3. When prompted, enter the following information to identify your plugin:

   groupId	com.example.confluence
   artifactId	button-macro
   version	1.0-snapshot
   package	com.example.confluence.button

4. Confirm your entries when prompted.

5. Start Eclipse.

6. Select File | Import... from the Eclipse menu...