Using the Jenkins API is perhaps the most effective way of managing your Devops Tasks, Be it getting the job information, Finding the users information, Copying the jobs, Creating new jobs, triggering the build on multiple jobs, Clearing the Queues, Creating Credentials, Installing a Plugin, safe restart of Jenkins and many more through the API for ease of Jenkins Administration.
How to Copy a Jenkins job from Jenkins API?
A job can be referenced in order to be copied and replicated any number of times from the Jenkins UI dashboard.
First up we navigate to the Jenkins dashboard and then navigate to New Item
Enter an item name
-> Go to the end of the page -> Enter the job name to be copied from.
The pattern name will be automatically matched from your typing and Jenkins auto suggests the source reference job name and click ok to proceed and then save in the next screen.
Using the Jenkins API:
We can use the jenkins API more effectively copy the job and create another job exact same preferences.
The syntax for the Jenkins API call will be as follows:
$ java -jar /tmp/jenkins-cli.jar -s http://jenkins.linuxcent.com:8080 -auth admin:admin copy-job SRC-JOB-NAME DST-JOB-NAME
You can also update the passwords to a text file and then pass the credentials to -auth with @<filename>
Know the Jenkins server version
$ java -jar /tmp/jenkins-cli.jar -s http://jenkins.linuxcent.com:8080 -auth @passfile -version Version: 2.222.1
How to Download the Jenkins jarfile ?
If you are Unable to access jarfile jenkins-cli.jar
on your jenkins server, Then you can download it from this URL path on your Jenkins Instance: http://YOUR-Jenkins-IP/jnlpJars
/jenkins-cli.jar
$ wget http://YOUR-Jenkins-IP:8080/jnlpJars/jenkins-cli.jar -O /tmp/jenkins-cli.jar