Backstage Argo CD Plugin

Argo CD, a CNCF project, enables declarative GitOps workflows for Kubernetes. Argo CD continuously monitors all running applications and compares their live state to the desired state specified in the Git repository. Argo CD can pull updated code from Git repositories and deploy it directly to Kubernetes resources, thus enabling developers to manage both infrastructure configuration and application updates in one system.

The ArgoCD Backstage plugin brings synced status, health status, and updates history of your services to your Developer Portal. This plugin can support multiple ArgoCD instances. In this guide you'll find:

Installation steps
Required annotations
Set up for multiple ArgoCD instances

See the Argo CD Backstage plugin in action

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A preview of Argo CD overview widget including kubernetes pod status.

Installation steps

Install the plugin into Backstage.

cd packages/app
yarn add @roadiehq/backstage-plugin-argo-cd

Add proxy config to the app-config.yaml file

proxy:
  '/argocd/api':
    target: https://<your-argocd-instance>/api/v1/
    changeOrigin: true
    # only if your argocd api has self-signed cert
    secure: false
    headers:
      Cookie:
        $env: ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN

Add argoCD widget to your overview page

// packages/app/src/components/catalog/EntityPage.tsx
import {
  EntityArgoCDOverviewCard,
  isArgocdAvailable
} from '@roadiehq/backstage-plugin-argo-cd';

const overviewContent = (
  <Grid container spacing={3} alignItems="stretch">
  ...
    <EntitySwitch>
      <EntitySwitch.Case if={e => Boolean(isArgocdAvailable(e))}>
        <Grid item sm={4}>
          <EntityArgoCDOverviewCard />
        </Grid>
      </EntitySwitch.Case>
    </EntitySwitch>
  ...
  </Grid>
);

Add annotation to the yaml config file of a component

metadata:
  annotations:
    argocd/app-name: <your-app-name>

Get and provide ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN as env variable in following format

ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN='argocd.token=<token>'

Found a mistake? Update these instructions.

Configure multiple Argo CD instances

There are two options for setting up multiple Argo CD instances.

Option 1: use a proxy per instance

If you want to create multiple components that fetch data from different argoCD instances, you have to add a proxy config for each instance:

proxy:
...

  '/argocd/api':
    target: https://<someAddress>/api/v1/
    changeOrigin: true
    secure: false
    headers:
      Cookie:
        $env: ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN

  '/argocd/api2':
    target: https://<otherAddress>/api/v1/
    changeOrigin: true
    secure: false
    headers:
      Cookie:
        $env: ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN2

Add all required auth tokens to environmental variables, in this example, ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN2.

And then in the following component definition annotations add a line with the url to the desired proxy path:

argocd/proxy-url: '/argocd/api2'

argocd/proxy-url annotation defaults to ‘/argocd/api’ so it’s not needed if there is only one proxy config.

Option 2 - Argo CD backend plugin

To enable ArgoCD backend plugin you need to import it to your backend application.

Create plugin file for ArgoCD backend in your packages/backend/src/plugins/ directory.

// packages/backend/src/plugins/argocd.ts

import { createRouter } from '@roadiehq/backstage-plugin-argo-cd-backend';
import { PluginEnvironment } from '../types';

export default async function createPlugin({
  logger,
  config,
}: PluginEnvironment) {
  return await createRouter({ logger, config });
}

Modify your backend router to expose the APIs for ArgoCD backend

// packages/backend/src/index.ts

import argocd from './plugins/argocd';
...

const argocdEnv = useHotMemoize(module, () => createEnv('argocd'));
...
apiRouter.use('/argocd', await argocd(argocdEnv));

If you want to create multiple components that fetch data from different argoCD instances, you can dynamically set the ArgoCD instance url by adding the following to your app-config.yaml files.

argocd:
  username: ${ARGOCD_USERNAME}
  password: ${ARGOCD_PASSWORD}
  appLocatorMethods:
    - type: 'config'
      instances:
        - name: argoInstance1
          url: https://argoInstance1.com
          token: ${ARGOCD_AUTH_TOKEN}
        - name: argoInstance2
          url: https://argoInstance2.com

The Argo plugin will fetch the Argo CD instances an app is deployed to and use the backstage-plugin-argo-cd-backend plugin to reach out to each Argo instance based on the mapping mentioned below.

Add the required auth tokens to environmental variables, ARGOCD_USERNAME and ARGOCD_PASSWORD.

You can also use an argo session token as mentioned above in the argocd object as shown above. If omitted, we will use the argo username and password from the code block above.

Prefer a no-code Backstage setup?

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