Using Jenkins Cli to manage jobs and credentials

Jenkins has a built-in command line interface that allows users and administrators to access Jenkins from a script or shell environment. This can be convenient for scripting of routine tasks, bulk updates, troubleshooting, and more.

Downloading the client

To download the client:

curl -LO http://remote.jenkins.ci:8080/jnlpJars/jenkins-cli.jar

Please note that if you are using a remote jenkins with username and password you need to authenticate as follows:

java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -auth username:password -s http://remote.jenkins.ci:8080/ <command>

# Example
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -auth username:password -s http://remote.jenkins.ci:8080/ help

Add this -logger FINE to turn on logging.

Basic commands

# who-am-i - gets info about the current user's credentials and permissions
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar who-am-i

# list-jobs
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar list-jobs

# Download job called 'Build SanEclipse' to local xml file
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar get-job 'Build SanEclipse' > Build_San_Eclipse.xml

# create job from the xml file
cat Build_San_Eclipse.xml | java -jar jenkins-cli.jar  create-job 'Build San Eclipse'
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar create-job 'Build San Eclipse' < Build_San_Eclipse.xml

# list credentials
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar list-credentials system::system::jenkins

# list-credentials-providers
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar list-credentials-providers

# get-credentials-as-xml - github-token
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar get-credentials-as-xml system::system::jenkins _ github-token

# creating credentials from xml
java -jar jenkins-cli.jar create-credentials-by-xml  system::system::jenkins _ < github-token.xml

Job creation can also be done using ansible.

ansible-galaxy collection install community.general
ansible-galaxy collection install --ignore-certs community.general

The yaml file

- hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  gather_facts: False
  vars:
    jenkins_host: http://127.0.0.1:8080/
    username: <username>
    password: <password>
  tasks:
    - name: Create Build San Eclipse job
      community.general.jenkins_job:
        user: "{{ username }}"
        password: "{{ password }}"
        name: Build-San-Eclipse
        url: "{{ jenkins_host }}"
        config: "{{ lookup('file', 'Build_San_Eclipse.xml') }}"

This is how to use it

ansible-playbook create-san-eclipse-job.yaml -vvv