Moving Custom Fields in JIRA Plugins

How can you change where a custom field type comes from in JIRA?

JIRA custom field types are defined in JIRA plugins, and are uniquely identified by their plugin key and field key. For instance if a plugin has a groupId "com.mycompany.jira.plugins" and an artifactId "myplugin", then (by default) the plugin key is "com.mycompany.jira.plugins.myplugin". A field key is something like "mycustomfield".

If I install such a plugin and create a custom field using the new custom field type, then what happens if I want to deploy the custom field type in a different plugin? I can see three choices:

1. Keep the same plugin key and field key - rather limiting

2. Create the custom field type in the new plugin, create a new custom field and migrate all the data from the old field to the new field. Then remove the old plugin.

3. Change the key of the custom field in the database.

The last option is probably the neatest in the long term, but it's an ugly way to have to administer a tool such as JIRA.

Does anyone have any better ideas? I suppose I could write a plugin that updates the database directly. What I'd really like is a way to have aliases for a custom field's type so that it could change over time.

Adding components to JIRA automatically with a script

Both the SOAP or REST APIs for JIRA are missing a method to add a component to a JIRA project. The shell script below calls the appropriate URL to do this. File under "ugly but effective", and thanks to Justin for his handy post.

~Matt


#
# Add components to a JIRA project.
#
# The parameters to the URL are encoded by passing them with -d


USERNAME=admin
PASSWORD=admin
SERVER_URL="http://jira.example.com:8080"
# Set this to the project you want to add components to
projectid=10001


DASHBOARD_PAGE_URL=$SERVER_URL/secure/Dashboard.jspa
COOKIE_FILE_LOCATION=jiracoookie


# Get the authentication cookie
curl -u $USERNAME:$PASSWORD --cookie-jar $COOKIE_FILE_LOCATION -sS --output /dev/null $DASHBOARD_PAGE_URL


for component in "Able Baker Charlie" "Lowly Work" "Huckle Cat"; do
  echo "Adding component: $component"
  curl --cookie $COOKIE_FILE_LOCATION --header "X-Atlassian-Token: no-check" -sS --output /dev/null -d "name=$component" -d "pid=$projectid" "$SERVER_URL/secure/project/AddComponent.jspa"
done


rm $COOKIE_FILE_LOCATION

Editing finished!

I've just finished editing my book "Practical JIRA Administration". Look for it from O'Reilly soon! If all goes well, there should be some printed copies available at Atlassian Summit in June.

~Matt