Automatically Export Build and Release definitions using Powershell or DEVOPS tasks - azure-devops

Question

Have a requirement to automatically export specific Azure DEVOPS Build/Release definitions. I know the names of the definitions required. The process would run weekly to capture the information. I know the export can be done manually but want to automate process. Hoping Powershell script can be used.
Thanks
Joe

Answer 1

If you want to export the build/release definition automatically, you'd better use Powershell task with Rest API. But if this, it is not enough for just know the build definition name.
Refer to these docs: get build definition and get release definition. You can see that definitionid is necessary. In fact, this definitionid is very easy to get. Just click the relevant pipeline you want to export, the definitionid will display in URL:
To export the definition, you can use the follow script in powershell:
$headers = #{ Authorization = "Bearer $env:SYSTEM_ACCESSTOKEN" }
$projectsUrl = "https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_apis/build/definitions/{build definitionid}?api-version=5.1"
$result = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $projectsUrl -Method Get -Headers $headers
$filename=$result.name+".json"
$filePath="D:\"
$file=$filePath+$filename
$result | ConvertTo-Json | Out-File -FilePath $file
In this script, I specified the build name as the file name($filename=$result.name+".json"), and also, convert the result content as JSON to make the local file more readable:
Similarly, to get the release definition, just change the url as get release difinition:
$headers = #{ Authorization = "Bearer $env:SYSTEM_ACCESSTOKEN" }
$projectsUrl = "https://vsrm.dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_apis/release/definitions/{definitionId}?api-version=5.1"
$result = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $projectsUrl -Method Get -Headers $headers
$filename=$result.name+".json"
$filePath="D:\"
$file=$filePath+$filename
$result | ConvertTo-Json | Out-File -FilePath $file
Note: While use #{ Authorization = "Bearer $env:SYSTEM_ACCESSTOKEN" }, you'd enable Allow scripts to access the OAuth token to make the environment variable available during build pipeline.
In addition, as what you want is capture the information weekly, you can Schedule the pipeline which has these export task:
Now, these export pipeline will run and export the definition weekly.

Answer 2

You'll be looking at the az pipelines release and az pipelines build commands from Azure DevOps CLI
Commands Reference
Extension Reference