Calling Rest APIs in Jira using JavaScript

Introduction

This article provides an entry point to write JavaScript code in Atlassian Jira to call external REST APIs and load json data into Jira custom fields.

Background

There are scenarios where we want data from a 3^rd party application (example: Java or .NET) to be displayed in Jira's custom fields.

This can be achieved by writing a JavaScript code using XMLHttpRequest.

Using Code

We will use the below external API for this article, this API is free and easily available over the net. You can click on the link and see the json data getting generated.

• https://teamtreehouse.com/matthew.json

Suppose we want to display json data from the above mentioned API link into 3 fields - Proposed Project Name, Project Sponsor ADS ID and 3^rd Party Name (see below screenshot).

We can write JavaScript for the same in any of the custom field's "Field Configuration" present on Create Issue screen of Jira.

Below is the JavaScript code snippet.

Code Analysis

1. Here, we are creating an object of XMLHttpRequest.
   XMLHttpRequest is an API that provides client functionality for transferring data between a client and a server. It provides an easy way to retrieve data from a URL without having to do a full page refresh.
2. Open the given API link with open() function.
3. Parse the json data generated by calling the API link into a variable "obj".
4. Update Jira custom fields with the parsed json data.
   P.S.: You can know the ID of any customfield by Right Click -> Inspect element

Below is the JavaScript code for your reference:

<script type="text/javascript"> 

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", "https://teamtreehouse.com/matthew.json", false);
xhr.send();
var obj = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
document.getElementById("customfield_10800").value = obj.badges[1].id;
document.getElementById("customfield_10801").value = obj.badges[1].name; 
document.getElementById("customfield_10802").value = obj.badges[1].url; 
console.log(xhr.status);
console.log(xhr.statusText);

</script>