Using Azure Devops CLI to generate repository reports

I needed to see some reports on my codebase, such as information about merges to the main branch of code. To do this, I made use of Microsoft’s Azure DevOps CLI and its corresponding extensions to write a PowerShell script that generates a CSV file with a report of completed pull requests.

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Resources

1. Azure DevOps CLI documentation

2. The completed initial version of this script can be found on my GitHub:

   absterellio / azure-devops-cli-tool-v1

   Basic Powershell script that uses the Azure Devops CLI to generate repository reports

   azure-devops-cli-tool-v1

   Basic Powershell script that uses the Azure Devops CLI to generate repository reports.

   NOTE: In the script.ps1 file, replace any variables that begin with "ex-" with your own applicable Azure devops values in order for this script to run.

   Blog post with more details: https://dev.to/absterellio/using-azure-devops-cli-to-generate-repository-reports-1h7d

   View on GitHub

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Setup

To begin, we need to set up a few things. The Azure DevOps CLI documentation linked above has more details on this. The CLI installation is a very quick download process.

1. Install Azure DevOps CLI
2. Add the Azure DevOps extension

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The Code

Like stated above, my goal was to generate reports on specific repositories in my codebase. Below, I noted some key ways I made use of the CLI in my script.

Authentication:

To begin using the CLI, we need to authenticate. Following the instructions on this page, Azure DevOps PAT documentation, I created my own personal access token (PAT). The following line takes in the token and authenticates against your organization.

echo $pat | az devops login --organization ex-projectLink

"ex-projectLink" should be replaced with the applicable link to the project, and the $pat variable should be the created access token.

Listing pull requests made into a repository:

The CLI specifies a reference for working with repositories (az repos). I added flags to specify completed PR’s that went into the repo’s 'main' branch. "$projectName" should be the name of the project that you are querying.

az repos pr list --project $projectName --repository $repo --status completed --target-branch ex-main --include-links | ConvertFrom-Json

The ConvertFrom-Json is a built in cmdlet that I used to convert the json return value into an object so I can grab properties from it later.

Retrieving work items attached to a pull request:

az repos pr work-item list --id $pr.pullRequestId | ConvertFrom-Json

Replace {$pr.pullRequestId} with the corresponding Id of the pull request you’d like to grab work items for and this will return a list of items that were attached to this PR.

Outputting the results to a csv file:

First, I set the headers of the CSV file that I’ll output my results to.
Set-Content -Path $location -Value '"PR Number","Date Closed","Repo Name","Created By","Reviewers","Work Item Id"'

With the returned PR, grab the id, names of creators/reviewers, closed date, etc. from the pull request and any other applicable values.

$workItemId = $workItem.id
$createdBy = $pr.createdBy.displayName
$reviewedBy = $pr.reviewers.displayName
$date = $pr.closedDate

Then, output the results to the file.

Add-Content -Path $location -Value "$prNumber,$date,$repo,$createdBy,$reviewedByString,$workItemId"

I hope this serves as a quick introduction to the Azure DevOps CLI and its basic uses for querying repository and pull request history. Next, I plan to add a GUI and more usability features to this tool for everyday usage.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to have a look at the script in GitHub and leave thoughts or suggestions for improvement.