I have already wrote about Atlassian Jira automation in “Automated task processing with JIRA API“. But all examples there were with using of curl. So, I decided to make one more post about Jira API. This time with python examples and about labeling issues (nice wordplay, right? 😉 ).

You can use labeles for organizing issues on Jira Scrum and Kanban Boards, Jira Dashboards or just for advanced searching (e.g. labels = "LabelName")

Let’s start from the basics.

How to search Jira issues from your own python scripts?

It’s easy. Send a post request to /rest/api/2/search/ with some JQL expression. Jira server will return first 50 matching issues. If you need more, set a startAt parameter and repeat post requests while the number of issues you requested is less than total number of founded issues (parameter in response).

Something like this:

import requests
import json

requested = 0
search_results = dict()
total = 1
while requested < total:
    post_data = json.dumps({'jql': 'assignee in (user_id) order by created DESC', "startAt": requested, "maxResults": 50})
    headers = {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    }
    response = requests.post('https://jira.corporation.com/rest/api/2/search/', headers=headers, data=post_data,
                             verify=False, auth=(user, password))
    data = json.loads(response.text)
    total = data['total']
    search_results[requested] = data
    requested += 50

Get the issue IDs from the search_results structure:

for base in search_results:
    for key in search_results[base]['issues']:
        print(key['key'])

Output:

SECURITY-317
SECURITY-314
SECURITY-313
SECURITY-498
SECURITY-497
SECURITY-402
SECURITY-401
SECURITY-400
SECURITY-489
SECURITY-482

How to get issue date knowing it’s id?

You can do it by sending a get request to /rest/api/2/issue/[issue id]:

issue_id = "SECURITY-498"

headers = {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
}

response = requests.get('https://jira.corporation.com/rest/api/2/issue/' + str(issue_id), headers=headers,
                        verify=False, auth=(user, password))
data = json.loads(response.text)

Here are the labels:

print(data['fields']['labels'])

Output:

[u'ImportantLabel']

How to edit the labels of Jira issue?

Create a small json with a part of issue data that you want to change and make a post request to /rest/api/2/issue/[issue id]

headers = {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
}

new_labels = [ 'ImportantLabel', 'TestLabel' ]
put_data = json.dumps({ 'fields': { 'labels' : list(new_labels) } })
response = requests.put('https://jira.corporation.com/rest/api/2/issue/' + str(issue_id), headers=headers, data=put_data,
                            verify=False, auth=(user, password))

You can set other Jira fields in a similar way.

Alexander Leonov

Hi! My name is Alexander and I am a Vulnerability Management specialist. You can read more about me here. Currently, the best way to follow me is my Telegram channel @avleonovcom. I update it more often than this site. If you haven’t used Telegram yet, give it a try. It’s great. You can discuss my posts or ask questions at @avleonovchat.

А всех русскоязычных я приглашаю в ещё один телеграмм канал @avleonovrus, первым делом теперь пишу туда.