SonarQube

CatalogScorecards

SonarQube is an open-source platform that empowers developers to write clean and safe code by continuously inspecting code quality and reviewing for bugs, vulnerabilities, and code duplication. By integrating SonarQube with Cortex, you can drive powerful insights into code coverage, code smells, and vulnerabilities.

In this guide, you'll learn how to set up and use the SonarQube integration to drive insights into several key values:

• Code coverage
• Code smells
• Vulnerabilities

Setup and configuration

Getting started

In order to connect Cortex to your SonarQube instance, you’ll first need to create a SonarQube user token.

Configuration

Once you’ve created a SonarQube token, you can configure the integration in Cortex from the SonarQube page in Settings.

caution

If you do not see the settings page you're looking for, you may not have permission to access that page. Please contact your admin for assistance.

From the SonarQube Settings page, you’ll see the option to Add SonarQube configuration.

• Account alias: Used to tie entity registrations to different configuration accounts
• Token: Personal access token generated earlier
• SonarQube URL: URL for your SonarQube instance, e.g. https://sonarcloud.io

Once you save your configuration, you'll see it listed on the integration's settings page in Cortex. If you’ve set everything up correctly, you’ll see the option to Remove Integration in Settings.

You can also use the Test all configurations button to confirm that the configuration was successful. If your configuration is valid, you’ll see a banner that says “Configuration is valid. If you see issues, please see documentation or reach out to Cortex support.”

The SonarQube integration has multi-account support. You can add a configuration for each additional by repeating the process above.

Each configuration requires an alias, which Cortex uses to correlate the designated with registrations for various entities. Registrations can also use a default configuration without a listed alias. You can edit aliases and default configurations from the SonarQube page in your Cortex settings. Select the edit icon next to a given configuration and toggle Set as default on. If you only have one configuration, it will automatically be set as the default.

Self-hosted Sonar instances

If you’re using a self-hosted instance of SonarQube, you’ll need to verify that your Cortex instance is able to reach the SonarQube instance.

caution

If you're using a self-hosted instance of SonarQube, you'll need to verify that your Cortex instance is able to reach the SonarQube instance.

We route our requests through a static IP address. Reach out to support at help@cortex.io to receive details about our static IP. If you're unable to directly allowlist our static IP, you can route requests through a secondary proxy in your network that has this IP allowlisted and have that proxy route traffic to your SonarQube instance.

If you're unable to directly allowlist our static IP, you can route requests through a secondary proxy in your network that has this IP allowlisted and have that proxy route traffic to your SonarQube instance.

Advanced configuration

If you’re unable to expose your SonarQube instance to be reachable by Cortex, you can set up a custom integration webhook. To learn more about SonarQube webhooks, visit their webhook documentation.

Registration

Discovery

By default, Cortex will use the entity tag (e.g. my-entity) as the "best guess" for SonarQube project key. For example, if your entity tag is my-entity, then the corresponding project key in SonarQube should also be my-entity.

If your SonarQube project key don’t cleanly match the Cortex entity tag, you can override this in the Cortex entity descriptor.

caution

If you’re using build-system tooling to push analysis to SonarQube, the plugin (e.g. Gradle, Maven) may be automatically generating a project key that’s different from the repo name.

Entity descriptor

If you need to override automatic discovery, you can define the following block in your Cortex entity descriptor.

x-cortex-static-analysis:
  sonarqube:
    project: sonar-project-key
    alias: sonarqube-alias

Field	Description	Required
project	Project key defined in Sonarqube	✓
alias	Alias for the configuration in Cortex (only needed if you have opted into multi-account support)

caution

Cortex only supports one SonarQube project per entity.

Expected results

Entity pages

Once the integration is established, data from SonarQube will be available under Integrations for each entity, as well as under the Overview and Code and Security tabs. You can pull in data on code smells, bugs, code coverage, vulnerabilities, and any custom metrics available through Sonar. You can read more about metric definitions in Sonar's documentation.

• Metrics
  • Complexity
  • Duplications
  • Issues
  • Maintainability
  • Quality gates
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Size
  • Tests
• Code freshness
• Code coverage

Scorecards and CQL

With the SonarQube integration, you can create Scorecard rules and write CQL queries based on SonarQube projects.

See more examples in the CQL Explorer in Cortex.

Analysis freshness

Duration since the last analysis was uploaded to SonarQube for a given project (with granularity of days).

Definition: sonarqube.freshness()

Example

For a Scorecard focused on operational readiness, you can use this expression to evaluate the freshness of static analysis metrics from SonarQube.

sonarqube.freshness() <= duration("P7D")

This rule checks that an analysis has been uploaded to SonarQube within the past week, which developers can use to make sure the metrics being pulled aren't stale.

This same rule would work in a security Scorecard - by making sure a SonarQube analysis has been uploaded within the last seven days, you make sure teams are monitoring for compliance to coding rules.

Metric

Query metrics generated by static analysis of your projects and sent to SonarQube:

• Alert status
• Bugs
• Code smells
• Coverage
• Duplicated lines
• Duplicated lines density
• Lines of code
• New blocker violations
• New bugs
• New code smells
• New coverage
• New security hotspots
• New violations
• Reliability rating
• Security hotspots
• Security rating
• Security review rating
• SQALE rating
• Vulnerabilities

Definition: sonarqube.metric("<metric>")

Examples

For a Scorecard focused on development maturity, you can set a rule to make sure entities have greater than 80% code coverage.

sonarqube.metric("coverage") > 0.80

Developers can then immediately identify entities that are falling behind to make improvements to testing effectiveness. This Scorecard can also give users a more comprehensive sense of how well code is being tested, and where gaps exist.

This rule also serves as a secondary check that a given entity is hooked up to Sonarqube and reporting frequently.

You can also use the sonarqube.metric("<metric>") expression to write a rule for a security Scorecard, making sure production entities aren't deployed with a high number of security vulnerabilities:

sonarqube.metric("vulnerabilities") < 2

In that security Scorecard, you could also use this expression to evaluate code coverage:

sonarqube.metric("coverage") > 70

Entities with low code coverage scores are more likely to be vulnerable to attack, so a lower threshold might make sense for certain security Scorecards.

Rules focused on security hotspots and vulnerabilities can also make sure entities are operating with minimal security issues.

sonarqube.metric("security_hotspots") < 5

sonarqube.metric("vulnerabilities) < 1

Plus, if an entity begins failing one of these rules, it can alert you to broader security problems.

Project existence

SonarQube project exists for an entity.

Definition: sonarqube != null

Example

For a Scorecard focused on operational readiness, you can write a rule to make sure an entity has an associated SonarQube project.

sonarqube != null

Because having a SonarQube project set would be key for an entity to be evaluated via other SonarQube-related expressions, this rule would make sense in a Scorecard's initial level.

FAQs and troubleshooting

Does Cortex support SonarCloud?

Yes. You can integrate with SonarCloud by following the same steps as integrating with SonarQube. In the URL field, use your <https://sonarcloud.io/> URL. You can also use multi-account support to add a self-hosted or SonarCloud instance by adding the URL for that instance during configuration.

I’m seeing “Socket timed out when trying to connect to SonarQube” for all of my entities in Scorecards.

This means that Cortex is unable to talk to your SonarQube instance. Make sure that your instance is running and accessible to Cortex.

I’m using Gradle and I’ve verified that my project is in SonarQube, but Cortex is still showing me an error.

Gradle automatically generates a project key which is equal to [${project.group}:]${project.name}. As a result, automatic discovery won’t work. You’ll need to override the project key in your Cortex entity descriptor.

My project is in Sonar and Cortex is able to talk to SonarQube, but my score isn’t showing up.

Try the following troubleshooting steps:

1. Make sure the project key in your YAML is exactly the same as the key in SonarQube.
2. Verify that the scores are in the “default branch” in SonarQube. If your scores are showing up in a branch-a in SonarQube, but your SonarQube default branch is main, Cortex will not be able to retrieve the scores.
3. Run the following curl command and verify there are metrics showing up in the response:

    curl -v -u <token>: "https://[SONARQUBE HOST]/api/measures/
    component_tree?component=[SONARQUBE PROJECT KEY]&metricKeys=ncloc,coverage"

What if I want to send custom data, but I don't have control over the integration touchpoint?

If you don't have control of or access to the integration touchpoint (for example, if you're using a SonarQube notification webhook) you'll want to use the API to send custom data. You can find information on sending data to a custom data webhook here.

SonarQube connection: “Component key not found”

For SonarQube (and all integrations), Cortex will map the entity tag defined in the cortex.yaml for a given entity. For SonarQube specifically, the tag must exactly match the project ID in SonarQube. If these are not one-to-one, we recommend using the override detailed above to define the proper mapping for project ID and entity name.

Still need help?

The following are all the ways to get assistance from our customer engineering team. Please use the option that is best for your users:

• Email: help@cortex.io, or open a support ticket in the in app Resource Center
• Chat: Available in the Resource Center
• Slack: Users with a connected Slack channel will have a workflow added to their account. From here, you can either @CortexTechnicalSupport or add a :ticket: reaction to a question in Slack, and the team will respond directly.

Don’t have a Slack channel? Talk with your customer success manager.