Jan 3, 2017

Using Jira REST API with PowerShell

For automation purposes, I needed a tool to interact with the REST API of Atlassian Jira over Powershell commands.

I found a great module developed by replicaJunction and contributors on Github called PSJira.

Installation

You will need

Powershell >=3.0
Install-Module PSJira (if you have Package Management Installed Module)
and for sure, an Atlassian Jira instance

First-Run

Set-JiraConfigServer -Server 'https://my.jira.server.com:port'

Setup jira credentials in `.ps1`

Encrypt credentials (Once)

Do this with the Windows session of the user who will launch the .ps1 scripts (service account)

$passwd = ConvertTo-SecureString “PlainTextPassword” -AsPlainText -Force
$encrypted = ConvertFrom-SecureString -secureString $passwd
$encrypted | Set-Content c:\path\cred.txt

In your .ps1 script

Load credential, and launch a connection to Jira.

$secure = Get-Content 'C:\path\cred.txt' | convertto-securestring
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ("Jira User", $secure)
New-JiraSession -Credential $cred

Basics commands

Get-JiraIssue #-Query -Filter -Key
Add-JiraIssueComment TEXT -VisibleRole 'All Users'
Set-JiraIssue #-Assignee
New-JiraIssue #-Project PROJECT_NAME -IssueType Bug -Priority 1 -Summary 'Test from PSJira' -Description 'Content of your Bug Issue'
``

#### Examples

In my case, we created a bot called [Lucy](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2872732/) who launch tidies tasks on our Jira instance (scheduled with RES Automation Manager), she can update idle tickets for example, or automatically assign tickets to Administrators based on Jira filters, etc..

I used PowerShell's `Get-Random` function to render her speech more 'Human', she takes a random sentence on a simple txt file.

```powershell
$random = Get-Content 'C:\path\Speak.txt' | Get-Random
Get-JiraIssue -Filter YOU_FILTER_ID | Add-JiraIssueComment $random -VisibleRole 'All Users'

Automation, Automation, Automation.

That’s all folks!

zoph.