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JIRA on the CLI

·3 mins

Small discovery I’ve made a while ago: jira. It’s a small go binary that can do about everything you want on JIRA.

Let’s first log into our JIRA instance:

mkdir ~/.jira.d/
echo 'endpoint: jira.company.com' > ~/.jira.d/config.yml
jira login

And then create our first issue!

jira create -p PROJ -i Task -b

This command will create a Task in PROJECT and then open it in your browser. Upon creation, it’ll fire up your $EDITOR for you to edit the fields you need. You could also change this editor in the configuration with editor: vim.

That’s pretty basic, let’s say you want to start working on PROJ-42 and comment something:

jira take PROJ-42
jira progress PROJ-42

As you go you need to add a comment to the task:

jira comment PROJ-42 # will open $EDITOR for you to comment

And finally, resolve it:

jira resolve PROJ-42
jira close PROJ-42

One thing I use often is browse, this command will open the corresponding ticket in your browser, rather than opening JIRA, type the issue key and hit enter in JIRA:

jira browse PROJ-42

This is still pretty basic, one thing I love with this tool is the ability to write custom workflows. See this configuration:

custom-commands:
  - name: mine
    help: display issues assigned to me
    script: |-
      if [ -n "$JIRA_PROJECT" ]; then
          # if `project: ...` configured just list the issues for current project
          {{jira}} list --template table --query "resolution = unresolved and assignee=currentuser() and project = $JIRA_PROJECT ORDER BY priority asc, created"
      else
          # otherwise list issues for all project
          {{jira}} list --template table --query "resolution = unresolved and assignee=currentuser() ORDER BY priority asc, created"
      fi      
  - name: recent-proj
    help: display PROJs created within the past 4 days
    script: |
      jira list -q "project = PROJ AND created >= -4d" -t table      
  - name: my-updated-2d
    help: display tickets updated by the current user within the past 2 days
    script: |
      jira list -q 'issueFunction in commented("by currentUser() after -2d") or (status changed BY currentuser() after -2d) or (created >= -2d and creator = currentuser() ) or (assignee changed by currentuser() after -2d)'%

As you can see, these custom commands are only calling jira itself using JQL. You can use these commands as follows:

jira mine
jira recent-proj
jira my-updated-2d

One last example are slightly more complicated custom commands with arguments. I have a workflow where I need to create 2 tickets for the same issue and link them as blocking:

custom-commands:
  - name: failed-disk
    help: create a PROJ and a MID ticket for a failed disk
    options:
      - name: host
        short: h
        required: true
      - name: disk
        short: d
        required: true
      - name: disk_serial
        short: s
        required: true
      - name: host_serial
        required: true
    script: |-
      DESCRIPTION="
      The following disk on {{options.host}} {{options.host_serial}} has failed:
      - {{options.disk}} (serial {{options.disk_serial}})
      "      
     
      proj=$(jira create -p PROJ -i "Task" -o summary="{{options.host}}: failed disk" -o components=disk -o description="$DESCRIPTION" --noedit)

      echo $proj

      mid=$(jira create -p MID -i "Task" -o summary="{{options.host}}: failed disk" -o description="$DESCRIPTION" --noedit)

      echo $mid

      jira issuelink -b $(echo $proj | cut -d" " -f2) Blockers $(echo $mid | cut -d" " -f2)

Now, instead of going crazy clicking in JIRA for 10 minutes, I can just fire the following command and be done with it:

jira failed-disk -h $hostname -d /dev/sda -s DJHWO72DK --host_serial

As much as I dislike JIRA, it’s not going away anytime soon and tools like this one are helping not going crazy trying to deal with the UX. There is another one that I haven’t tried yet: jiracli. Let me know if you did!

– This is day 2/100 of #100DaysToOffLoad!

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