Adding an image as an attachment to an Azure DevOps work item using the "Attachments - Create" API does not render when opened

Question

I've gone through several other SO pages and while it did help me with understanding how the upload of attachments to work item works, I still cannot find a way to view the said attachment after successfully uploading it via API, especially if its an image.

APIs I've used:

To create an attachment link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/wit/attachments/create?view=azure-devops-server-rest-5.0

Using the attachment URL retrieved from the previous API response, I use it in the Work Item Update API, below is a snippet:

api = f"https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/_apis/wit/workitems/{work_item_id}?api-version=6.0"
    file_size = os.path.getsize(file_path)
    payload = [
        {
            "op": "add",
            "path": "/relations/-",
            "value": {
                "rel": "AttachedFile",
                "url": attachment_url,
                "attributes": {
                    "comment": "Test",
                    "resourceSize": file_size
                }
            }
        }
    ]

After this, the attachment is visible in the work item but when clicked on, it does not render the image. Instead a window opens and an infinite loading screen animation plays. Its got to be the encoding of the image thats causing this however I cannot find any documentation.

Below is the full code for uploading attachments to an existing work item.

def upload_attachment(file_path, work_item_id):

    # This part retrieves the Attachment URL
    headers = {
        "Accept": "application/json",
        "Content-Size": str(os.path.getsize(file_path)),
        "Content-Type": "application/octet-stream",
    }
    files = {'attachment': open(file_path, 'rb')}
    filename = os.path.basename(file_path)
    api = f"https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/wit/attachments?uploadType=Simple&fileName={filename}&api-version=1.0"
    resp = requests.post(url=api, files=files, headers=headers, auth=("","*fmhcstt*4nwadqy3uk*go23fga"))    
    attachment_url = resp.json()['url']

    # This part updates an existing work item, adding the attachment here.
    api = f"https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/_apis/wit/workitems/{work_item_id}?api-version=6.0"
    file_size = os.path.getsize(file_path)
    payload = [
        {
            "op": "add",
            "path": "/relations/-",
            "value": {
                "rel": "AttachedFile",
                "url": attachment_url,
                "attributes": {
                    "comment": "Test",
                    "resourceSize": file_size
                }
            }
        }
    ]
    headers = { 
        'Accept':'application/json', 
        'dataType': 'application/json-patch+json',
        'Content-type':'application/json-patch+json'
    }
    resp = requests.patch(url=api, headers=headers, json=payload, auth=("","*fmhcstt*4nwadqy3uk*go23fga"))

refer to this doc You could change the patch to put method. What kind of attachment are you uploading?Where is the attachment? — Jeff
Sure! I'll give it a try. I'm uploading a PNG file to a work item @Jeff — KevinLee
Okay so before going to Chunked uploads, I tried using PUT instead of PATCH and I got an error saying the specific the HTTP method does not support PUT. Then I tried using chunked upload API and I'm getting the error as "Content-Range specified in the attachment upload request is not valid." I'm guessing that has something to do with the small file size since its only a single PNG that I'm trying to upload. — KevinLee

KevinLee KevinLee · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-12T08:33:24

I found the issue to be with the POST request.

requests.post(url=api, files=files, headers=headers, auth=("","*fmhcstt*4nwadqy3uk*go23fga"))

Should have been:

requests.post(url=api, data=files, ...

Adding an image as an attachment to an Azure DevOps work item using the "Attachments - Create" API does not render when opened

1 Answers