tl;dr Creating a custom Hue app is fun and easy.

We use Hue a lot where I work and recently I created a metadata aggregation tool with a Solr backend and a simple Handlebars frontend. Originally, I demoed this as a standalone application, but I got to thinking - the users of the metadata will be mainly using Hue, so why not put this app there too?

Luckily, Hue has decent SDK documentation that steps you through creating a custom Hue app. One command gets you a blank project to work from.

$ ./build/env/bin/hue create_desktop_app metabase

Hue is a Django application, so being familiar with that, or at least Python, is a plus.

And once you’re ready to deploy, a second command registers it with Hue.

$ ./build/env/bin/python tools/app_reg/app_reg.py --install metabase --relative-paths

A couple odd things I haven’t figured out yet:

• The link to the new app gets placed under an “Other Apps” menu in the Hue toolbar
• Some of the built-in app icons use FontAwesome icons instead of images. Not sure how to set up a custom app to use those instead of images.

The SDK docs do a good job explaining what’s included with Hue by default - like the outdated Bootstrap 2.0 - but it gives you everything you need to create your own app and make it look like it shipped with Hue.