jenkins-view-builder

jenkins-view-builder is a command line tool for managing jenkins views with yaml files and back your views with SCM.

Installation

Install jenkins-view-builder at a system level or in an isolated virtualenv by running the following command:

    pip install jenkins-view-builder

Usage

There are several types of views in jenkins:

• Build Pipeline View
• Nested View
• Dashboard
• List View
• Radiator

jenkins-view-builder as of now supports List View, Build Pipeline View and Nested View with support for other views coming soon. Examples of yaml files are in the tests/fixtures folder. Views are specified as yaml files and given to the jenkins-view-builder to upload to jenkins. Say, you have the following List View view in a yaml file

    - view:
        type: list
        name: monsanto
        description: Merge ply jobs
        jobs:
         - Merge-nova-Ply
         - Merge-config-Ply
         - Merge-bark-Ply    
        columns:
         - status
         - weather
        recurse: False
	- view:
		type: list
		name: second
		description: Second ply jobs
		columns:
			- status
		recurse: False

jenkins-view-builder can create this view in jenkins. jenkins-view-builder needs a jenkins config file which tells it how to connect to jenkins. The config file looks like this

    [jenkins]
    user=user
    password=password
    url=http[s]://jenkinsurl

Also you can override connection parameters by shell arguments:

    --url - Jenkins URL
    --user - Jenkins user
    --password - Jenkins user password

Once that is ready, we are all set to create the view in jenkins using the following command

    jenkins-view-builder update --conf path-to-jenkins-config-file path-to-view-yaml-file

There should be feedback on stdout on what the tool is doing. update command is capable of determining if the view already exists and if it does then it just updates it.

It is also possible to test the view to make sure that jenkins-view-builder is creating the correct xml that it would post to jenkins. This can be done using the following command

    jenkins-view-builder test path-to-view-yaml-file

Running this command will spit out the generated xml in the out folder of the current working directory. If the output looks good, the update command can be used to upload the view.