Jenkins Job Views with different Job names

Question

I have a requirement in Jenkins wherein,

1. We have, for example, 10 jobs in view ABC with specific configuration.
2. Now, I need to create a new view in Jenkins XYZ and clone all the jobs in ABC with different name and change the configuration, for example SCM URL.

I came across a groovy script which might do this, but I am not much aware of groovy

https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Clone+all+projects+in+a+View

We create a new branches (new URL's) for every release. So the jobs under the view ABC needs to be copied into XYZ with different names and URL's updated. I do not want to waste time creating each job individually with different name and then add them to the view XYZ

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use the Folders Plugin and you then do not need to change your job names or manage views.

To copy jobs from one Folder to another you can use the ssh cli interface like this.

ssh -l USERNAME MYjenkins:port copy-job /OLD/job1 /NEW/job1 ssh -l USERNAME MYjenkins:port copy-job /OLD/job2 /NEW/job2

NOTE: some ssh clients do not support ":port" and require a command like this instead:

ssh -l USERNAME -p PORT MYjenkins copy-job /OLD/job1 /NEW/job1

If not using folders, you can automate creation of new jobs and views from existing jobs like this:

ssh -l USERNAME MYjenkins:port create-view NEW-VIEW ssh -l USERNAME MYjenkins:port copy-job jobN NEW_jobN ssh -l USERNAME MYjenkins:port add-job-to-view NEW-VIEW NEW_jobN

Please see the Cloudbees CLI for information on how to configure user keys and how to determine and configure the correct port to use.

You can even copy Jobs from one Jenkins instance to another by retrieving the job's config.xml then creating a new job with that XML as follows:

ssh -l USERNAME MYJenkins:port get-job AJOB > AJOB.xml ssh -l USERNAME MYOTHERJenkins:port2 create-job AJOB < AJOB.xml

One last hint: try ssh -l USERNAME MYJenkins:port help or ssh -l USERNAME MYJenkins:port help create-job

To get some hints about syntax and available commands.

Answer 2

You can use the jenkins job dsl for this which also contains an interface to create views

You can iterate the jobs in your view with this

http://<your jenkins server>:<your jenkins port if its not on 80>/view/<your view>/api/json

then clone the jobs with job command

job{
  name 'new name'
  using 'original name'

  //other configuration 
}

This is all coded in groovy as a build step in a separate job. You could even have parameters to name the view and jobs or drive it out of a SCM

---

EDIT A nice question. I implemented it like this

view named templateView

jobs called templateJobA, templateJobB, etc

def templateJobsURL = new URL("http://jenkins-server:8080/view/templateView/api/json")
def templateJobs = new groovy.json.JsonSlurper().parse(templateJobsURL.newReader())
def newJobs = []

templateJobs.jobs.each { 
    def templateName = it.name
    def newName = templateName.replaceAll('template','new')
    job {
        name newName
        using templateName
    }
    newJobs.push(newName)
    println templateName + ' ' + newName
}

view(type: ListView) {
    name('new')
    description('All jobs for project A')
    jobs {
        newJobs.each{
           names (it)
           println 'view add ' + it
        }
    }
    columns {
        status()
        weather()
        name()
        lastSuccess()
        lastFailure()
        lastDuration()
        buildButton()
    }
}