Work Item Command Line 5.0

Posted on July 3, 2019 by rsjazz

I just published the Work Item Command Line (WCL) version 5.0. In this post, I will provide a short summary of the changes that went in.

Download and License

The work item command line is provided as is, with no warranty or support, under MIT license. The source code is provided here.

In addition to the source code I usually create releases that contain a zip file with WCL pre built and ready to use. Please note that some of the commands require additional libraries that are not packaged due to license concerns. Read the readme file contained in the WCL folder for how to get the libraries. This is the WCL 5.0 release.

Compatibility

Please note that the current WCL 5.0 is built and tested for RTC 6.0.x. It should be possible to use WCL against older versions of RTC, but that requires some modifications to deal with some small API and packaging changes for RTC 6.0.x. Please see this post for some information about what needs to be done.

Changes

The changes between WCL 4.3 and WCL 5.0 are as follows.

A new command -bulkupdate has been added that allows to perform an update for all work items returned by a query. All qualified work items will be updated with the values provided. The values can be provided with the same syntax used in the command -update.
It is now possible to delete all attachments of a work item. Use the pseudo attribute @deleteAttachments with required value “yes“.
It is now possible to delete all links of a linktype from a work item. Use the pseudo attribute @deleteLinks_linktype with required value “yes“.
Timestamps/Date values can now be set to unassigned.
WCL registers itself as potentially resource intensive scenario. This information is available in the RTC server as MBean and can be queried and displayed.
Work item resolution values are now correctly exported as display value and not as resolution ID.
Work item resolution values are now correctly imported. WCL detects the value to set for a resolution from the display name and the ID.
The command -importworkitems now handles empty column values for the attributes where it makes sense. An empty column value will overwrite an attribute value and remove it. In previous versions the import ignored empty values. Not all attributes can be set to an empty value. Categories, for example, have to always be set using a category value. Use the switch /ignoreemptycolumnvalues to switch back to the old behavior ignoring empty columns.
The command -importworkitems does no longer attempt to write attributes that can not be set and only displays a warning. Examples are the creator, the creation date and other values managed by RTC.
The command -importworkitems handles some new pseudo attributes such as e-signature gracefully by warning that they are not supported.
The export and print work item commands order the column output alphabetically if no special column order is specified.
Minor bug fixes.

Changes are also mentioned in the releases.

Summary

WCL has come to a point where it does pretty much all I wanted it to do in the inception phase. I hope it helps users out there. Some feedback who uses it and against which version would be helpful.

28 thoughts on “Work Item Command Line 5.0”

Laxmi Royyala on June 5, 2020 at 11:05 pm said:

Hi, does this utility allow to export work item attachments, change set, history

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- rsjazz on June 8, 2020 at 8:37 am said:
  
  See https://github.com/jazz-community/work-item-command-line/blob/master/README.md
  
  Reply ↓
- rsjazz on June 8, 2020 at 8:38 am said:
  
  History is not exported neither is change set content.
  
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Donat Hutter on June 23, 2020 at 2:57 pm said:

Hi Ralph,
I’m trying to transfer workitems with attachments (wcl 5.1.1, import into RTC 6.0.6.1):
The -exportworkitems provides a column “Attachments” with following value “./Attachments/278343/SampleLine.png,SampleLine.png,image/png,UTF-8” (which corresponds to the form “SomeFilePath,Some Description,ContentTypeID,EncodingID”.
But the -importworkitems creates out of this two identical attachments with same name.

Bug or do I miss something?

regards,
Donat

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- rsjazz on June 23, 2020 at 3:10 pm said:
  
  Hi Donat,
  
  I would assume my intent was to import the data as good as possible. I don’t know why the duplicate is created. I would suggest to open an issue on https://github.com/jazz-community/work-item-command-line . If I can find dime I will have a look. No promises.
  
  If you have set up a development client, you could have a look, as well.
  
  Reply ↓
  - Donat Hutter on June 23, 2020 at 4:18 pm said:
    
    thanks .. will try to dig into this in the development environment. Will inform you if I get the root cause.
  - Donat Hutter on June 23, 2020 at 9:59 pm said:
    
    Import works well.
    The issue with duplicated attachments is due to the fact, that the command -exportworkitems with switch /allColumns provides in my environment 2 “Attachments” columns with same information.
  - rsjazz on June 24, 2020 at 8:56 am said:
    
    I would suggest to specify the columns you want to export. I can’t filter pseudo attributes that are duplicates of other attributes.
anoymous on September 2, 2020 at 8:10 pm said:

Does this work with PlainJava 6.0.6.1 I’m getting commandline errors below:

StartTime: Sep 2, 2020 2:07:14 PM
WorkItemCommandLine Version 5.3

Starting Team Platform …
Executing command: exportworkitems

Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/httpclient/Header
at com.ibm.team.repository.transport.client.RemoteTeamServer.getHttp3ResponseHeaders(RemoteTeamServer.java:2089)
…..

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- rsjazz on October 14, 2020 at 3:20 pm said:
  
  I have run WCL with RTC 6.0.6.1. Note you need a recent Java 1.8.
  
  Reply ↓
  - Stefan Schmidt on February 2, 2021 at 11:09 am said:
    
    I think it is version 3 I will try the latest version and will come back to you.
  - rsjazz on February 2, 2021 at 11:19 am said:
    
    Version 3 is way back. There was a change in the API around version 4 and there are countless fixes in 5.x.
Donat Hutter on June 17, 2021 at 7:14 pm said:

I try to use WCL on Version 7 of Jazz, but experience following issue with adding attachments.
In “WorkItemUpdateHelper.java”, method “attachFile”, the statement “CreateAttachment” on this line
IAttachment newAttachment = getWorkItemClient().createAttachment(getWorkItem().getProjectArea(), file, description, contentType, encoding, fis, monitor);

gives a server exception:
CRJAZ2796E Details about the error were written to the server log file. java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Item id and State id must not be null

The IProjectAreaHandle has only itemId (UUID) property set, but stateId is null. Any idea how to solve this issue?
Is this new behavior in Jazz version 7?

regards,
Donat

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- rsjazz on June 17, 2021 at 8:10 pm said:
  
  Can you please create an issue in the Git project with the details. Another user reported something similar but I can not reproduce it. Please provide details – Version of WCL, Version of EWM, What attachment, encoding? I have only very few time to look into something at the moment, the more hints, the better. Maybe even some details on the CSV and the folder structure you use.
  
  Reply ↓
- rsjazz on June 17, 2021 at 8:12 pm said:
  
  Please also let me know which version of Plain Java Client Libraries you use and which Java Version.
  
  Reply ↓
  - Pushpita on March 7, 2022 at 1:41 pm said:
    
    any update on this particular issue?
  - rsjazz on March 7, 2022 at 1:51 pm said:
    
    In that particular case the user did not understand what the RMI mode was and how to use it. It was a user error. They did stop trying to use RMI mode and used the normal mode.
  - Pushpita on March 7, 2022 at 1:42 pm said:
    
    I am facing the same issue while adding an attachment for an item :
    Error : RmiOperationClient exception: Item id and State id must not be null CRJAZ2796E Details about the error were written to the server log file. To find this data, search the log file for this identifier: 5450E9C3BDA925A58348D133498259502CCA0266.$$$$
    
    java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Item id and State id must not be null CRJAZ2796E Details about the error were written to the server log file. To find this data, search the log file for this identifier: 5450E9C3BDA925A58348D133498259502CCA0266.
  - rsjazz on March 7, 2022 at 1:48 pm said:
    
    The WCL code is in a GIT project that allows to create issues and provide a reasonable way to communicate issues. Create an issue there. Provide the complete sequence of calls and more details.
    
    https://github.com/jazz-community/work-item-command-line/issues
Rodrigo Barros on August 31, 2021 at 3:24 pm said:

Is there any way to update a timesheet line with timecode in work item usin WCL?

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- rsjazz on September 13, 2021 at 10:47 am said:
  
  As far as I am aware I have not implemented support for timesheets.
  
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Hamid on February 16, 2023 at 12:48 am said:

Hi Ralph,

I need to add links of type Related Artifact with their labels. But I don’t think WCL handles the link labels. Can you confirm?

Thank you!

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- rsjazz on February 16, 2023 at 10:16 am said:
  
  You should rather look here: https://github.com/jazz-community/work-item-command-line
  
  I can’t find an indication that I support link labels.
  
  Reply ↓
  - rsjazz on February 16, 2023 at 11:33 am said:
    
    The code is, for example, in
    
    com.ibm.js.team.workitem.commandline.helper.WorkItemUpdateHelper.createCLM_URI_References(ParameterValue, IEndPointDescriptor, List)
    
    Where I use
    
    reference = IReferenceFactory.INSTANCE.createReferenceFromURI(new URI(uri), uri);
    
    I always use the URI as the comment, because the parameter handling does not support specifying the URI.
    
    It would be a major change to modify the input parameters to support additional link labels.
  - rsjazz on February 16, 2023 at 2:20 pm said:
    
    You could use an unused character from these unsafe characters: “{“, “}”, “\”, “^”, “~”,
    “[“, “]”, and “`”. to encode the Label into the URI:
    @link_related_artifact=uri1|uri2|…
    
    E.g.
    @link_related_artifact=uri1^A label for the link|uri2^Another label for the link|uri3|…
    
    @link_related_artifact=https://server……/item/123^The Label I want|https://server……/item/155^Another Label|…
    
    and enhance com.ibm.js.team.workitem.commandline.helper.WorkItemUpdateHelper.createCLM_URI_References(ParameterValue, IEndPointDescriptor, List) to split the URI and the label using the separator ^ .
Binoy on April 1, 2023 at 4:46 am said:

Hi Ralph,

I’m trying to get it working on Linux and windows with 6.0.6.1 client libs and JDK 1.8 (updates 121, 191 and 361). On both I get this error just simply running the wcl.bat or wcl.sh:

Error: A JNI error has occurred, please check your installation and try again
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/logging/log4j/core/config/Configuration
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2701)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetMethodRecursive(Class.java:3048)
at java.lang.Class.getMethod0(Class.java:3018)
at java.lang.Class.getMethod(Class.java:1784)
at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.validateMainClass(LauncherHelper.java:544)
at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:526)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.logging.log4j.core.config.Configuration

Appreciate any help!

Thanks,
Binoy

Reply ↓
Binoy on April 1, 2023 at 5:06 am said:

Nevermind! I was using WCL 6 which is not compatible. Used WCL 5.3.1 (seems to be 5.x latest that support 6.0.6.1) and it works.

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- rsjazz on April 3, 2023 at 11:54 am said:
  
  Yes, with 7.0.2SR1 Log4j1 was removed Log4j2 was added and that made changes not backwards compatible, unfortunately.
  
  Reply ↓