Gitlab Webhook and Jenkins: No Data Received

Question

I have been following the below links in order to integrate Gitlab with Jenkins using web hooks. All the below links mention to receive 'JSON' or 'payload' or token over at Jenkins side, but I do not see anything when I try to echo or print these parameters in the Shell script of Jenkins configurations.

In shell script I have this, but I never receive any payloads:

echo "the build worked! The payload is $payload"

I do see some JSON coming through on /var/log/Jenkins/Jenkins.logs, but I want to see the messages coming in inside my 'Console Output', so that I can use the messages coming in from Gitlab to whether trigger a build or not.

Most of these links mention options are not available via Gitlab. One article was mentioning to convert web hook format to application/json, but there are no such options on the Gitlab UI. How to process a github webhook payload in Jenkins? http://chloky.com/github-json-payload-in-jenkins/

Jenkins Settings:

Gitlab webhook:

http://xx.xx.xx.xxx:8080/job/Interim_Build/buildWithParameters?token=TOKEN_NAME

Any help would be great. Thanks.

Answer 1

I suggest you to try two solutions (both working for me):

1. convert json data from Gitlab webhook using this elegant proxy written in Go https://github.com/akira/githookproxy . It will take the webhook request, and translate it to a request to the target_url in the format of:

   • payload: JSON body
   • START: Start commit hash
   • END: End commit hash
   • REFNAME: Ref name

2. emulate jenkins as a Gitlab CI using this Jenkins plugin https://github.com/jenkinsci/gitlab-plugin

For me the best is the first because it is simple and more transparent.

Answer 2

GitLab and GitHub are two separate products. So, the documentation or links for GitHub webhooks that you are referring will not apply to GitLab webhooks.

GitLab invokes the webhook URL with a JSON payload in the request body that carries a lot of information about the GitLab event that led to the webhook invocation. For example, the GitLab webhook push event payload carries the following information in it:

{
  "object_kind": "push",
  "before": "95790bf891e76fee5e1747ab589903a6a1f80f22",
  "after": "da1560886d4f094c3e6c9ef40349f7d38b5d27d7",
  "ref": "refs/heads/master",
  "checkout_sha": "da1560886d4f094c3e6c9ef40349f7d38b5d27d7",
  "user_id": 4,
  "user_name": "John Smith",
  "user_username": "jsmith",
  "user_email": "[email protected]",
  "user_avatar": "https://s.gravatar.com/avatar/d4c74594d841139328695756648b6bd6?s=8://s.gravatar.com/avatar/d4c74594d841139328695756648b6bd6?s=80",
  "project_id": 15,
  "project":{
    "id": 15,
    "name":"Diaspora",
    "description":"",
    "web_url":"http://example.com/mike/diaspora",
    "avatar_url":null,
    "git_ssh_url":"[email protected]:mike/diaspora.git",
    "git_http_url":"http://example.com/mike/diaspora.git",
    "namespace":"Mike",
    "visibility_level":0,
    "path_with_namespace":"mike/diaspora",
    "default_branch":"master",
    "homepage":"http://example.com/mike/diaspora",
    "url":"[email protected]:mike/diaspora.git",
    "ssh_url":"[email protected]:mike/diaspora.git",
    "http_url":"http://example.com/mike/diaspora.git"
  },
  "repository":{
    "name": "Diaspora",
    "url": "[email protected]:mike/diaspora.git",
    "description": "",
    "homepage": "http://example.com/mike/diaspora",
    "git_http_url":"http://example.com/mike/diaspora.git",
    "git_ssh_url":"[email protected]:mike/diaspora.git",
    "visibility_level":0
  },
  "commits": [
    {
      "id": "b6568db1bc1dcd7f8b4d5a946b0b91f9dacd7327",
      "message": "Update Catalan translation to e38cb41.",
      "timestamp": "2011-12-12T14:27:31+02:00",
      "url": "http://example.com/mike/diaspora/commit/b6568db1bc1dcd7f8b4d5a946b0b91f9dacd7327",
      "author": {
        "name": "Jordi Mallach",
        "email": "[email protected]"
      },
      "added": ["CHANGELOG"],
      "modified": ["app/controller/application.rb"],
      "removed": []
    },
    {
      "id": "da1560886d4f094c3e6c9ef40349f7d38b5d27d7",
      "message": "fixed readme",
      "timestamp": "2012-01-03T23:36:29+02:00",
      "url": "http://example.com/mike/diaspora/commit/da1560886d4f094c3e6c9ef40349f7d38b5d27d7",
      "author": {
        "name": "GitLab dev user",
        "email": "gitlabdev@dv6700.(none)"
      },
      "added": ["CHANGELOG"],
      "modified": ["app/controller/application.rb"],
      "removed": []
    }
  ],
  "total_commits_count": 4
}

The Jenkins GitLab plugin makes this webhook payload information available in the Jenkins Global Variable env. The available env variables are as follows:

gitlabBranch
gitlabSourceBranch
gitlabActionType
gitlabUserName
gitlabUserEmail
gitlabSourceRepoHomepage
gitlabSourceRepoName
gitlabSourceNamespace
gitlabSourceRepoURL
gitlabSourceRepoSshUrl
gitlabSourceRepoHttpUrl
gitlabMergeRequestTitle
gitlabMergeRequestDescription
gitlabMergeRequestId
gitlabMergeRequestIid
gitlabMergeRequestState
gitlabMergedByUser
gitlabMergeRequestAssignee
gitlabMergeRequestLastCommit
gitlabMergeRequestTargetProjectId
gitlabTargetBranch
gitlabTargetRepoName
gitlabTargetNamespace
gitlabTargetRepoSshUrl
gitlabTargetRepoHttpUrl
gitlabBefore
gitlabAfter
gitlabTriggerPhrase

Just as you would read Jenkins job parameters from Jenkins Global Variable params in your job pipeline script, you could read webhook payload fields from Jenkins Global Variable env:

echo "My Jenkins job parameter is ${params.MY_PARAM_NAME}"
echo "One of Jenkins job webhook payload field is ${env.gitlabMergedByUser}"

Hope, the above information helps solve your problem.