A little script to update job descriptions on Matrix jobs

We have started to use Matrix jobs in Hudson to try and reduce the amount of clutter on the front page; but we have run into problems in that the job description plugin we used to add the LABEL name to the job id only works for the subordinate tasks. This leaves the top level job without a description.

There are of course other ways you can do this; but since I was playing with the new REST api yesterday, I am going to use this. You could of course use the old RESTy API or indeed the command line tool to perform similar feats. This week I mostly just have a hammer.

Before you use the proxy classes you need to first create a client with the right security credentials configured:

   public static Client createClient() {
       Client client = Client.create();
       client.addFilter(new HTTPBasicAuthFilter("xxxxx@oracle.com","xxxxxxx"));
       return client;
   }

The first part of the job is going to be to create proxies for both the parent project and of the child variant:

   public static void main(String[] args) {

       if (args.length!=2) {
           System.err.println("Expecting two parameters project and variant");
       }

       String project = args[0];
       String variant = project + "%2F" + args[1]; 

       System.out.printf("Will copy missing description from %s to %s\n", variant, project);

       // Create a Jersey client
       Client client = createClient();

       // Create a suitable proxy using the client we configured
       Projects hudsonProjects = projects(client);

       // Handles to the right resources
       Projects.ProjectNameBuilds projectBuilds = hudsonProjects.projectNameBuilds(project);
       Projects.ProjectNameBuilds variantBuilds = hudsonProjects.projectNameBuilds(variant);

Then we can make a quick map of the variant build number to descriptions by getting the first build object:

       // Copy the descriptions out from the variant
       Map<Integer, String> variantToDescription = new HashMap<Integer,String>();
       BuildsDTO variantBuildsDTO = variantBuilds.getAsApplicationXml(BuildsDTO.class);
       for (BuildDTO build : variantBuildsDTO.getBuild()) {
           if (build.getDescription()!=null)
           {
               variantToDescription.put(
                   build.getNumber(), 
                   build.getDescription());
           }
       }

Now it turns out that the current version of the API doesn't allow you to update build descriptions; but we can easily read them using this API and then update them using a simple form POST using the same client.

       // Update the main project descriptions
       BuildsDTO projectBuildsDTO = projectBuilds.getAsApplicationXml(BuildsDTO.class);
       for (BuildDTO build : projectBuildsDTO.getBuild()) {

           String description = build.getDescription();
           // Update description if it has not already been set
           if (description == null || description.length()==0) {

               String variantDesc = variantToDescription.get(build.getNumber());
               if (variantDesc!=null && variantDesc.length()!=0) {

                   // We need to set the description; but nothing in the REST API
                   // so we can use the url property to perform a form submit that will
                   // update the description for us.

                   MultivaluedMap map = new Form();
                   map.add("description", variantDesc);
                   map.add("Submit", "Submit");
                   WebResource buildResource = client.resource(
                       build.getUrl() + "submitDescription");
                   ClientResponse response = buildResource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE)
                       .post(ClientResponse.class, map);
                   System.out.printf("Updating build %d with description %s gave response %d\n",
                                     build.getNumber(), variantDesc, response.getStatus());

               }
           }
       }