Describe your app for the catalog

Course

This lesson is part of a course that teaches you how to build a New Relic application from the ground up. If you haven't already, check out the course introduction.

Each lesson in the course builds upon the last, so make sure you've completed the last lesson, Add navigation to your nerdlet, before starting this one.

In the last lesson, you finished the A/B test application you've been building throughout this course. Now, it's time to prepare it for publication. When you publish your app to the New Relic app catalog, users can view it and subscribe to it. You can help your users by showing and telling them what the app does, how to use it, and more.

Create catalog information

To supply information to the catalog about your app, you need to create the catalog directory in your Nerdpack.

Step 1 of 6

Change to the describe-app/ab-test directory of the coursework repository:

bash

$cd nru-programmability-course/describe-app/ab-test

Step 2 of 6

Create the catalog directories:

bash

$nr1 create --type catalog

This creates a root catalog directory with template files for inputting custom information about your app and a catalog directory for each Nerdpack item where screenshots can be stored.

Tip

Read our documentation to learn more about the catalog directory.

Step 3 of 6

Update catalog/documentation.md:

## Documentation

This application combines and presents data from New Relic and the Nerdsletter API so that we can make an informed decision on which design version results in more high-quality newsletter subscriptions.

It also presents an button to end the test, which saves the date and version descriptions in local storage.

We can use this app for future A/B tests as well!

catalog/documentation.md

For this course, you're keeping the documentation concise by merely describing what the app does. In your own projects, you might also include instructions for contributing to the project in an open source context, installing the app's dependencies, or anything else that might help a user navigate complexities in your app or code.

Step 4 of 6

Update catalog/config.json:

{
  "tagline": "Win @ newsletter subscriptions",
  "details": "Display test data for our newsletter subscription A/B test",
  "categoryTerms": ["browser agent"],
  "keywords": ["a/b test"],
  "repository": "https://github.com/newrelic-experimental/nru-programmability-course",
  "whatsNew": "Initial release! Includes:\n- A variety of charts for understanding the test results\n- An end test button for storing some test data in a table",
  "support": {
    "email": {
      "address": ""
    },
    "issues": {
      "url": ""
    },
    "community": {
      "url": ""
    }
  }
}

catalog/config.json

Here, you've specified a tagline, project details, the Instant Observability category in which to place the app, search keywords, the source code repository, and a short list of everything included in the initial release. In other projects, you might also add a support email or support links.

Tip

Read our documentation to learn more about the catalog metadata.

Step 5 of 6

Save this screenshot to the following two directories:

nru-programmability-course/describe-app/ab-test/catalog/screenshots
nru-programmability-course/describe-app/ab-test/nerdlets/ab-test-nerdlet/catalog/screenshots

Users will be able to see a carousel of screenshots in your app's Overview page in the catalog.

Step 6 of 6

Save the following icon as icon.png in nru-programmability-course/describe-app/ab-test.

This will act as the app's catalog icon on the Overview page.

Now you've added documentation, screenshots, metadata, and an icon to your app so that users will be able to understand what it does and why they might need it. For now, these files are all local and they need to be submitted to the catalog. But before you can do that, your app, itself, needs to be published to the catalog.

In the next lesson, you'll publish your app, submit your catalog information, and view the results in New Relic.

Course

This lesson is part of a course that teaches you how to build a New Relic application from the ground up. Continue on to the next lesson: Publish your New Relic application.