Open in Coder - Coder Docs

Open in Coder

You can embed an "Open in Coder" button into your git repos or internal wikis to let developers quickly launch a new workspace.

How it works

To support any infrastructure and software stack, Coder provides a generic approach for "Open in Coder" flows.

1. Set up git authentication

See External Authentication to set up git authentication in your Coder deployment.

2. Modify your template to auto-clone repos

The id in the template's coder_external_auth data source must match the CODER_EXTERNAL_AUTH_X_ID in the Coder deployment configuration.

If you want the template to clone a specific git repo:

# Require external authentication to use this template
data "coder_external_auth" "github" {
    id = "primary-github"
}

resource "coder_agent" "dev" {
    # ...
    dir = "~/coder"
    startup_script =<<EOF

    # Clone repo from GitHub
    if [ ! -d "coder" ]
    then
        git clone https://github.com/coder/coder
    fi

    EOF
}

Note: The dir attribute can be set in multiple ways, for example:

~/coder

/home/coder/coder

coder (relative to the home directory)

If you want the template to support any repository via parameters

# Require external authentication to use this template
data "coder_external_auth" "github" {
    id = "primary-github"
}

# Prompt the user for the git repo URL
data "coder_parameter" "git_repo" {
    name          = "git_repo"
    display_name  = "Git repository"
    default       = "https://github.com/coder/coder"
}

locals {
    folder_name = try(element(split("/", data.coder_parameter.git_repo.value), length(split("/", data.coder_parameter.git_repo.value)) - 1), "")
}

resource "coder_agent" "dev" {
    # ...
    dir = "~/${local.folder_name}"
    startup_script =<<EOF

    # Clone repo from GitHub
    if [ ! -d "${local.folder_name}" ]
    then
        git clone ${data.coder_parameter.git_repo.value}
    fi

    EOF
}

3. Embed the "Open in Coder" button with Markdown

[![Open in Coder](https://YOUR_ACCESS_URL/open-in-coder.svg)](https://YOUR_ACCESS_URL/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/workspace)

Be sure to replace YOUR_ACCESS_URL with your Coder access url (e.g. https://coder.example.com) and YOUR_TEMPLATE with the name of your template.

4. Optional: pre-fill parameter values in the "Create Workspace" page

This can be used to pre-fill the git repo URL, disk size, image, etc.

[![Open in Coder](https://YOUR_ACCESS_URL/open-in-coder.svg)](https://YOUR_ACCESS_URL/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/workspace?param.git_repo=https://github.com/coder/slog&param.home_disk_size%20%28GB%29=20)

5. Optional: disable specific parameter fields by including their names as

specified in your template in the disable_params search params list

[![Open in Coder](https://YOUR_ACCESS_URL/open-in-coder.svg)](https://YOUR_ACCESS_URL/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/workspace?disable_params=first_parameter,second_parameter)

Example: Kubernetes

For a full example of the Open in Coder flow in Kubernetes, check out this example template.

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