Introduction

Authentication

In order to call the Backbone REST API, the user calling the API needs to be able to perform actions inside Backbone. So, they should either be a system administrator or a project administrator. Please note that a system administrator can activate in Backbone's global settings that only certain project administrators are able to use Backbone.

Before starting to request URLs, you need to be aware of the different authentication methods. You can authenticate yourself for the REST APIs in two ways:

Log in to JIRA manually You will then be authenticated for the REST APIs for that same browser session.
Use HTTP basic authentication (Authorization HTTP header) containing 'Basic username:password'. username:password must be base64 encoded.

If you want to use some non-browser tool like wget or curl, you probably have to use either HTTP basic authentication or URL parameters.

If you encounter the problem "XSRF check failed" while accessing the REST API, you should add the header "X-Atlassian-Token:nocheck" to your request.

Possible tools

curl

Curl is a command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax. It is preinstalled on MacOS X and available for all Linux distributions using the package manager. There are also builds for Windows available.

You can use curl using the command line as follows. On MacOS X and Linux please make sure to place the URL in double quotes as otherwise the "&" character inside the URL will break the command.

CODE

curl --remote-header-name --remote-name -u admin:admin "http://www.example.com/jira/plugins/servlet/backbone-issue-sync/api/1/health"

Note

In some cases the colons are replaced with '&3A'. Please check the permalink carefully and edit it if necessary.

If you want to call curl from a script, the "-f" parameter may be interesting as it will make curl return some non-zero return value in case of download errors. See the curl documentation for more info.

wget

wget is another command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax. It is available for all major platforms.

You can use wget using the command line as follows. On MacOS X and Linux please make sure to place the URL in double quotes as otherwise the "&" character inside the URL will break the command.

CODE

wget --content-disposition --http-user=admin --http-password=admin "http://www.example.com/jira/plugins/servlet/backbone-issue-sync/api/1/health"

Other Tools

There are plenty of other tools you can use (e.g. Postman). If you use them, you can compose the URL as described below.

CODE

http://www.example.com/jira/plugins/servlet/backbone-issue-sync/api/1/health

URL Overview

All urls of the Backbone REST API must be prepended by the following base URL: http://host[:port]/[contextPath]/plugins/servlet/backbone-issue-sync/api/1/

All endpoints are using application/json as the content type for request and responses if not stated different.