The 'Hello World' App

"HARSHRAJ`s First App – A personalized Confluence experience that greets users by name and adapts to their theme, showcasing the power of Forge with real-time context and user data integration."

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Inspiration

As a new developer in the Atlassian ecosystem, I was curious to explore how Forge could enable simple, yet powerful apps inside Confluence. I wanted to start small but meaningful—something that goes beyond static content and starts tapping into real user data. The idea of a personalized “Hello World” greeting felt like the perfect way to begin that journey.

What it does

The app is a Confluence Forge app that displays a dynamic greeting—“Hello, [username]!”—based on the current logged-in user. It also adapts its appearance to match the site’s active theme (light or dark). In short, it:

Accesses Confluence context (theme and user ID)

Calls the Confluence REST API using the @forge/bridge package

Fetches and displays the user’s public name

Shows the site’s current color theme

How we built it

Started with the confluence-space-page Forge template.

Customized the frontend index.jsx using React components from @forge/ui.

Used view.getContext() to access theme and accountId from context.

Integrated requestConfluence() to call the /wiki/api/v2/users-bulk endpoint to fetch the user’s public name.

Managed state using React’s useState and useEffect hooks.

Handled permissions and scopes by running forge lint --fix to auto-add read:user:confluence.

Challenges we ran into

Missing Permissions: Initially failed to fetch user info due to missing read:user:confluence permission.

Tunnel Management: Forgot to close the tunnel before redeploying, which caused some confusing behavior.

REST API Body Format: Crafting the correct JSON body string for the bulk user lookup API took a few tries.

Understanding Bridge APIs: It took time to fully grasp how requestConfluence works as a frontend-only bridge method.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully completed all three parts of the “First Forge Quest” challenge.

Learned to interact with real Confluence APIs.

Built a working Forge app that adapts dynamically to both the user and the UI environment.

Understood the Forge permission model and deployment workflow.

What we learned

How to use view.getContext() to access frontend context.

How to fetch real user data via REST APIs inside Forge.

The importance of handling scopes and permissions correctly.

How Forge enables a secure, sandboxed environment for building apps directly within Atlassian products.

What's next for The 'Hello World' App

Add user avatars using the /users API.

Show additional user metadata like email domain or account creation date.

Add admin-only features (e.g., show all space members).

Publish the app to the Atlassian Marketplace as a learning reference for other beginners.

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