Last updated August 28, 2023

The add-on manifest is a JSON document which describes the interface between Heroku and your cloud service. You write the manifest and manage it with the addons-admin CLI plugin in your development environment, then send the final manifest to Heroku when you’re ready to submit your add-on to our marketplace.

Requirements

• A Heroku account
• A working installation of the Heroku CLI
• The addons-admin CLI plugin

Generating a manifest

First, make sure you have the latest version of the addons-admin plugin:

$ heroku plugins:install addons-admin

Generate a new manifest:

$ heroku addons:admin:manifest:generate
# an interactive prompt will run, asking you basic questions about your new add-on

Updating a manifest

First, pull your manifest locally:

$ heroku addons:admin:manifest:pull your-slug-here

Your slug will be saved in the file addon-manifest.json in your current working directory.

When you’ve made the necessary changes and are ready to publish them, use push:

$ heroku addons:admin:manifest:push

This will push the contents of addon-manifest.json to the add-on identified by the id attribute in that file.

Example manifest

{
  "id": "errorbucket",
  "name": "Errorbucket",
  "cli_plugin_name": "heroku-errorbucket",
  "api": {
    "config_vars_prefix": "ERRORBUCKET",
    "config_vars": [
      "ERRORBUCKET_URL"
    ],
    "password": "GqAGAmdrnkDFcvR9",
    "sso_salt": "7CwqmJLEjv8YZTXK",
    "regions": ["us","eu"],
    "requires": ["log_input"],
    "production": {
      "base_url": "https://errorbucket.com/heroku/resources",
      "sso_url": "https://errorbucket.com/sso/login"
    },
    "version": "3"
  }
}

Fields

id

An id for your add-on. This is what users will enter when they type “heroku addons:create [youraddon]” All lower case, no spaces or punctuation. This can’t be changed after the first push to Heroku. It is also used for HTTP basic auth when making provisioning calls.

name

The name of your add-on.

cli_plugin_name

The npm package name of your add-on service’s Heroku CLI plugin

api/config_vars_prefix

Optional and defaults to a normalized version of your add-on slug/ID (e.g. fast-db will have a prefix of FAST_DB). Config vars in your manifest and in response to provision requests MUST begin with this prefix, followed by a single _, then any valid identifier.

api/config_vars

A list of config vars that will be returned on provisioning calls. Typically you will have exactly one (the resource URL), but multiple config vars are supported when a single config var doesn’t suffice.

api/password

A password that Heroku will send in HTTP basic auth when making provisioning calls.

api/sso_salt

Shared secret used in single sign-on between the Heroku admin panel and your service’s admin panel.

api/regions

The list of geographical regions supported by your add-on. It cannot be empty. Valid Cedar (standard stack) regions are:

• us
• eu

Valid Dogwood (Private Spaces) regions are:

• dublin
• frankfurt
• london
• montreal
• mumbai
• oregon
• singapore
• sydney
• tokyo
• virginia

Add-ons must currently support at least the Cedar US region; EU and Dogwood support is optional. If your add-on is region-agnostic (e.g. not latency sensitive) and behavior does not differ from region-to-region, you may use the meta-region * to signify full support for any current or future region.

api/requires

A list of features you’d like to enable. The currently public list of features that can be enabled are:

• log_input - Adds the log_input_url field to provision requests, which you can use to write your own messages to the log.
• syslog_drain - Adds the log_drain_token field to provision requests. If you respond with a log drain URL, you can use this token to identify logs coming from the application. See this article for more details.
• many_per_app - Allows developers to provision or attach multiple installations of your add-on. With this enabled, customers may also give attachments to the add-ons custom names.
• attachable - Allows developers to share an add-on between multiple apps. If many_per_app is also enabled, it allows them to give the same add-on multiple aliases (attachments) to one app.

api/version

The version of the partner API (the HTTP interface Heroku uses to communicate with your add-on service). If no value is specified the manifest will assume 1, however the current version of the partner API is 3, so it is advisable to set this in your manifest.

api/production/base_url

The production endpoint for Heroku API actions (provision, deprovision, and plan change). The path /heroku/resources must always be at the end of this URL, and will be automatically appended on the server-side if it is missing. Must use HTTPS.

api/production/sso_url

The production endpoint for single sign-on. Must use HTTPS.