Running jenkins jobs via command line

04/06/2017 - JENKINS

This example shows us how to trigger jenkins job/build via curl command in terminal. Step by step we will be building curl command below in order to trigger jenkins jobs from command line.


$ curl -X POST http://API_USER_ID:API_TOKEN@JENKINS_URL/job/JOB_NAME/build -H "CRUMB"

Info


The name of my job is Football. I would also suggest you to create a dedicated jenkins user and password rather than using admin:admin as I'll use in this example. My jenkins GUI URL is http://192.168.99.20:8080 as I am on vagrant.


Create job


  1. Login to jenkins in http://192.168.99.20:8080 address.

  2. Create a "Free Style" project named as "Football".

  3. Open it's configuration.

  4. Go to "Build Triggers" section.

  5. Tick "Trigger builds remotely (e.g., from scripts)" option just to take a note of the text written in there and untick it again. Text reads Use the following URL to trigger build remotely: JENKINS_URL/job/Football/build?token=TOKEN_NAME or /buildWithParameters?token=TOKEN_NAME. Optionally append &cause=Cause+Text to provide text that will be included in the recorded build cause..

  6. Save and exit.

Get API user and token


  1. Login to jenkins in http://192.168.99.20:8080 address.

  2. Click your username (mine is admin) on right hand side of the page.

  3. Select "Configure" option which will take you to http://192.168.99.20:8080/user/admin/configure page.

  4. In "API Token" section click "Show API token" button.

  5. Note "User ID" and "API Token" to use in your curl command later on. e.g. admin:85703fb68927f04968630e192e4927cb

Obtain crumb


For more information, visit Remote access API page.


$ wget -q --auth-no-challenge --user admin --password admin --output-document - 'http://192.168.99.20:8080/crumbIssuer/api/xml?xpath=concat(//crumbRequestField,":",//crumb)'

This will give you something like Jenkins-Crumb:44e7033af70da95a47403c3bed5c10f8. Without crumb information, running curl command will result in example errors such as HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden or Error 403 No valid crumb was included in the request.


Test


$ curl -I -X POST http://admin:85703fb68927f04968630e192e4927cb@192.168.99.20:8080/job/Football/build -H "Jenkins-Crumb:44e7033af70da95a47403c3bed5c10f8"
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2017 06:17:51 GMT
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Location: http://192.168.99.20:8080/queue/item/17/
Content-Length: 0
Server: Jetty(9.2.z-SNAPSHOT)

Note: You can remove -I flag if you don't want output.