Overview

To set up Datadog Static Analysis, navigate to Software Delivery > Code Analysis.

Select where to run Static Analysis scans

Scan in CI pipelines

Datadog Static Analysis runs in your CI pipelines using the datadog-ci CLI. Configure your Datadog API and application keys and run Static Analysis in the respective CI provider.

Select your source code management provider

Datadog Static Analysis supports all source code management providers, with native support for GitHub.

Set up the GitHub integration

If GitHub is your source code management provider, you must configure a GitHub App using the GitHub integration tile and set up the source code integration to see inline code snippets and enable pull request comments.

When installing a GitHub App, the following permissions are required to enable certain features:

• Content: Read, which allows you to see code snippets displayed in Datadog
• Pull Request: Read & Write, which allows Datadog to add feedback for violations directly in your pull requests using pull request comments

Other source code management providers

If you are using another source code management provider, configure Static Analysis to run in your CI pipelines using the datadog-ci CLI tool and upload the results to Datadog. You must run an analysis of your repository on the default branch before results can begin appearing on the Code Analysis page.

Customize your configuration

By default, Datadog Static Analysis scans your repositories with Datadog’s rulesets for your programming language(s). To customize which rulesets you want to apply and where, add a static-analysis.datadog.yml file to your repository’s root directory.

You can include the following global options in the static-analysis.datadog.yml file:

You can include the following ruleset options in the static-analysis.datadog.yml file:

You can include the following rule options in the static-analysis.datadog.yml file:

The map in the arguments field uses an argument’s name as its key, and the values are either strings or maps:

• To set a value for the whole repository, you can specify it as a string.
• To set different values for different subtrees in the repository, you can specify them as a map from a subtree prefix to the value that the argument will have within that subtree.

The full structure of the static-analysis.datadog.yml file is as follows:

rulesets:
  - ruleset-name
  - ruleset-name:
    # Only apply this ruleset to the following paths/files
    only:
      - "path/example"
      - "**/*.file"
    # Do not apply this ruleset in the following paths/files
    ignore:
      - "path/example"
      - "**/*.file"
  - ruleset-name:
    rules:
      rule-name:
        # Only apply this rule to the following paths/files
        only:
          - "path/example"
          - "**/*.file"
        # Do not apply this rule to the following paths/files
        ignore:
          - "path/example"
          - "**/*.file"
        arguments:
          # Set the rule's argument to value.
          argument-name: value
      rule-name:
        arguments:
          # Set different argument values in different subtrees
          argument-name:
            # Set the rule's argument to value_1 by default (root path of the repo)
            /: value_1
            # Set the rule's argument to value_2 for specific paths
            path/example: value_2
# Only analyze any ruleset in the following paths/files
only:
  - "path/example"
  - "**/*.file"
# Do not analyze any ruleset in the following paths/files
ignore:
  - "path/example"
  - "**/*.file"

Example configuration file:

rulesets:
  - python-best-practices
  - python-security
  - python-code-style:
    rules:
      max-function-lines:
        # Do not apply the rule max-function-lines to the following files
        ignore:
          - "src/main/util/process.py"
          - "src/main/util/datetime.py"
        arguments:
          # Set the max-function-lines rule's threshold to 150 lines
          max-lines: 150
      max-class-lines:
        arguments:
          # Set different thresholds for the max-class-lines rule in different subtrees
          max-lines:
            # Set the rule's threshold to 200 lines by default (root path of the repo)
            /: 200
            # Set the rule's threshold to 100 lines in src/main/backend
            src/main/backend: 100
  - python-inclusive
  - python-django:
    # Only apply the python-django ruleset to the following paths
    only:
      - "src/main/backend"
      - "src/main/django"
    # Do not apply the python-django ruleset in files matching the following pattern
    ignore:
      - "src/main/backend/util/*.py"
# Only analyze source files
only:
  - "src/main"
  - "src/tests"
  - "**/*.py"
# Do not analyze third-party or generated files 
ignore:
  - "lib/third_party"
  - "**/*.generated.py"
  - "**/*.pb.py"

Ignoring violations

Ignore for a repository

Add an ignore rule in your static-analysis.datadog.yml file. The example below ignores the rule javascript-express/reduce-server-fingerprinting for all directories.

rulesets:
  - javascript-express:
    rules:
      reduce-server-fingerprinting:
        ignore: "**"

Ignore for a file or directory

Add an ignore rule in your static-analysis.datadog.yml file. The example below ignores the rule javascript-express/reduce-server-fingerprinting for this file. For more information on how to ignore by path, see the Customize your configuration section.

rulesets:
  - javascript-express:
    rules:
      reduce-server-fingerprinting:
        ignore: "ad-server/src/app.js"

Ignore for a specific instance

To ignore a specific instance of a violation, comment no-dd-sa above the line of code to ignore. This prevents that line from ever producing a violation. For example, in the following Python code snippet, the line foo = 1 would be ignored by Static Analysis scans.

#no-dd-sa
foo = 1
bar = 2

You can also use no-dd-sa to only ignore a particular rule rather than ignoring all rules. To do so, specify the name of the rule you wish to ignore in place of <rule-name> using this template:

no-dd-sa:<rule-name>

For example, in the following JavaScript code snippet, the line my_foo = 1 is analyzed by all rules except for the javascript-code-style/assignment-name rule, which tells the developer to use camelCase instead of snake_case.

// no-dd-sa:javascript-code-style/assignment-name
my_foo = 1
myBar = 2

Upload third-party static analysis results to Datadog

You can send results from third-party static analysis tools to Datadog, provided they are in the interoperable Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) Format. Node.js version 14 or later is required.

To upload a SARIF report:

1. Ensure the DD_API_KEY and DD_APP_KEY variables are defined.

2. Optionally, set a DD_SITE variable (this default to datadoghq.com).

3. Install the datadog-ci utility:

   npm install -g @datadog/datadog-ci
   

4. Run the third-party static analysis tool on your code and output the results in the SARIF format.

5. Upload the results to Datadog:

   datadog-ci sarif upload $OUTPUT_LOCATION --service <datadog-service> --env <datadog-env>
   

Diff-aware scanning

Diff-aware scanning enables Datadog’s static analyzer to only scan the files modified by a commit in a feature branch. It accelerates scan time significantly by not having the analysis run on every file in the repository for every scan. To enable diff-aware scanning in your CI pipeline, follow these steps:

1. Make sure your DD_APP_KEY, DD_SITE and DD_API_KEY variables are set in your CI pipeline.
2. Add a call to datadog-ci git-metadata upload before invoking the static analyzer. This command ensures that Git metadata is available to the Datadog backend. Git metadata is required to calculate the number of files to analyze.
3. Ensure that the datadog-static-analyzer is invoked with the flag --diff-aware.

Example of commands sequence (these commands must be invoked in your Git repository):

datadog-ci git-metadata upload

datadog-static-analyzer -i /path/to/directory -g -o sarif.json -f sarif –-diff-aware <...other-options...>

Note: When a diff-aware scan cannot be completed, the entire directory is scanned.

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Monitor all your CI pipelines with DatadogBLOG Learn about the Source Code IntegrationDOCUMENTATION