TFS 2015 release management via Java SDK?

Question

With on-premise TFS 2015, we are trying to automate release management using a command-line tool which we have written in Java. This tool already uses the TFS Java SDK to carry out many other operations.

We need it to:

Create a new release
Deploy the release to a specified environment

Both of these work fine when done via the web GUI. However, based on the list of classes in the Java SDK, it seems these features are not available in the SDK. Is this correct, or is there a way to automate these deployment steps?

Failing that, is there a REST API? We found one but it seems to require API version 4.0 which is newer than that supported by TFS 2015...

Andy Li-MSFT Andy Li-MSFT · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-23T08:12:28

You can use the REST API to achieve that (with the API version api-version=2.3-preview.1):

I tested on TFS 2015 Update 4 (Version 14.114.26403.0) with below PS scripts, it works as expected.

Below PowerShell scripts for your reference:

Create a new release: (See REST API here)

Param(
   [string]$collectionurl = "http://server:8080/tfs/Collection",
   [string]$projectName = "ProjectName",
   [string]$keepForever = "true",
   [string]$user = "username",
   [string]$token = "token",
   [string]$releasedDefinitionId = "2" 
)

# Base64-encodes the Personal Access Token (PAT) appropriately
$base64AuthInfo = [Convert]::ToBase64String([Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(("{0}:{1}" -f $user,$token)))

function CreateJsonBody
{

    $value = @"
{
 "definitionId":$releasedDefinitionId,
  "description":"",
   "artifacts":[
         {
           "alias":"VSTEST",
           "instanceReference":{
                     "name":"20171123.1",
                     "id":"1256",
                     "sourceBranch":"$/0418Scrum/web0418"}
        }],
    "isDraft":false,
    "manualEnvironments":[]
}

"@

 return $value
}

$json = CreateJsonBody

$uri = "$($collectionurl)/$($projectName)/_apis/Release/releases?api-version=2.3-preview.1"
$result = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $uri -Method Post -Body $json -ContentType "application/json" -Headers @{Authorization=("Basic {0}" -f $base64AuthInfo)}

$ReleaseID = $result.id

Write-Host "ReleaseID:" $ReleaseID

Deploy the release to a specified environment: (Deploy the third environment in this sample, just change it based on your requirement.)

Param(
   [string]$baseurl = "http://server:8080/tfs/CollectionLC",
   [string]$projectName = "ProjectName",
   [string]$keepForever = "true",
   [string]$user = "username",
   [string]$token = "token",
   [string]$ReleaseID = "3" 
)

# Base64-encodes the Personal Access Token (PAT) appropriately
$base64AuthInfo = [Convert]::ToBase64String([Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(("{0}:{1}" -f $user,$token)))

#Get releaseresponse
$Releaseurl= "$baseurl/$projectName/_apis/Release/releases/$ReleaseID" 

$releaseresponse = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -UseDefaultCredentials -ContentType application/json -Uri $Releaseurl

#Get all of the environment IDs from the release response:
$environmentIDs = $releaseresponse.environments.ForEach("id")

#Get the specific environment ID by grabbing the element in the environment IDs array:
$firstEnvironment = $environmentIDs[0]
$secondEnvironment = $environmentIDs[1]
$thirdEnvironment = $environmentIDs[2] # ...

#Create the JSON body for the deployment:
$deploymentbody = @" 
{"status": "inprogress"} 
"@

#Invoke the REST method to redeploy the release:
$DeployUrl = "$baseurl/$projectName/_apis/release/releases/$releaseid/environments/"+$thirdEnvironment+"?api-version=2.3-preview.1" # Change the envrionment ID accordingly based on your requirement.

$DeployRelease = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Patch -ContentType application/json -Uri $DeployUrl -Headers @{Authorization=("Basic {0}" -f $base64authinfo)} -Body $deploymentbody

write-host "environmentIDs:" $environmentIDs

You can also get them together, Create a new release and deploy the specific environment in one script. See my answer in another thread.

TFS 2015 release management via Java SDK?

1 Answers