ADDING-LANGUAGE.md

Adding Programming Language to Your Software Catalog

In this guide, we will add programming language detection to your software catalog, so that each service will have a programming language property corresponding to the language used in the service.

End result:

---

Key Concepts

Before implementing anything in Port, let's understand three essential building blocks:

Blueprint

• The schema or template that defines your data structure
• Think of it like a class in programming: it defines the properties and relationships
• Example: A blueprint for a Jira issue would define properties like title, description, status, priority, assignee, etc., and could have relationships to other blueprints like user (for the assignee) and project

Entity

• A specific instance of a blueprint (like an object of a class)
• Contains the actual data for a service, issue, or other resource
• Example: The "payment-service" entity contains details about your payment microservice

Mapping

• JQ rules that convert your source data into Port entities
• Defines where to find data and how to transform it
• Example: Converting a GitHub repository's data into a service entity

Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Create a Blueprint

In this example, a blueprint was created automatically when you chose GitHub as your source.

You can examine the blueprint created by clicking on the Builder button on the top-right (or here) and then clicking on Data model and expanding the service blueprint.

Step 2: Creating JavaScript Language Mappings

Let's start by creating a JavaScript detection mapping.

Add the following mapping to the GitHub mapping you created in the Getting Started Guide.

Click on the Builder button on the top-right and then click on Data sources. Click to open the Github data source configuration. In the bottom-left Mapping section, add the following mapping to the end of the YAML file:

JavaScript Detection

- kind: file
selector:
  query: "true"
  files:
  - path: src/*/package.json
    repos:
    - microservices-demo
port:
  entity:
    mappings:
      identifier: .file.path | split("/") | .[1]
      blueprint: '"service"'
      properties:
        language: '"JavaScript"'

Important

If you renamed your repository after forking, make sure to change like before.

This mapping looks for package.json files in service directories to identify JavaScript/Node.js services.

Line-by-line Understanding the Mapping Structure

Each mapping consists of:

• A file selector that specifies which files to look for
• A repository filter to limit the scope
• Entity mappings that:
  • Extract the service identifier from the file path, see below JQ expression details
  • Specify the blueprint type ("service")
  • Set the programming language property

The .file.path | split("/") | .[1] expression extracts the service name from paths like src/<servicename>/package.json.

This setup will automatically detect and set the programming language for each service based on the presence of language-specific files in their directories.

Of course, you can change the language name to 'NodeJS' to 'TypeScript' or any other language name.

Step 3: Creating Other Language Mappings

You can create similar mappings for Python, GoLang, DotNet and Java by adding the following mapping to the GitHub mapping you created in the Getting Started Guide.

- kind: file
  selector:
    query: "true"
    files:
      - path: src/*/go.mod
        repos:
          - microservices-demo
  port:
    entity:
      mappings:
        identifier: .file.path | split("/") | .[1]
        blueprint: '"service"'
        properties:
          language: '"GoLang"'
- kind: file
  selector:
    query: "true"
    files:
      - path: src/*/requirements.txt
        repos:
          - microservices-demo
  port:
    entity:
      mappings:
        identifier: .file.path | split("/") | .[1]
        blueprint: '"service"'
        properties:
          language: '"Python"'
- kind: file
  selector:
    query: "true"
    files:
      - path: src/*/*.sln
        repos:
          - microservices-demo
  port:
    entity:
      mappings:
        identifier: .file.path | split("/") | .[1]
        blueprint: '"service"'
        properties:
          language: '"DotNet"'
- kind: file
  selector:
    query: "true"
    files:
      - path: src/*/build.gradle
        repos:
          - microservices-demo
  port:
    entity:
      mappings:
        identifier: .file.path | split("/") | .[1]
        blueprint: '"service"'
        properties:
          language: '"Java"'

Further Reading

To fully understand above mappings, you can read the following guides:

• Configure Mapping
• Setup Blueprint
• Relate Blueprints

Next Steps

To add self-service actions to your software catalog, proceed to:

Adding Self-Service Actions