Azure DevOps Utilities

The AzDOUtilities library provides a lightweight wrapper around the Azure DevOps REST API. It gives access to a high-level API through the IAzureDevOpsService interface. The service works with typed wrapper objects (AzDOUtilities.WorkItem) with change tracking support.

It's packaged as a NuGet package. You can add it to your project with the following command.

dotnet add package Julmar.AzDOUtilities --version 1.8.4.1-preview

Release notes

Version	Changes
1.8.4.1-preview	Move to .NET 6, updated for nullable reference types. Added standard agile work items for Epic, Feature, UserStory, Bug, and Task.
1.6.1-pre	Added ValidFields to WorkItem type to retrieve field names. Added Connection to provide underlying access to the VssConnection to retrieve other types.
1.6-pre	Added new QueryLinkedRelationshipsAsync method to retrieve work item links.
1.5.2-pre	Added new GetAsync to retrieve a set of Ids.
1.5.1-pre	Updated TeamFoundation package to latest.
1.5-pre	Optimize the LINQ query parser to support Take and restrict the fields to the queried type if possible.
1.4-pre	Some refactoring - removed the raw interface.
1.1-pre	Added Relationship enum and new IAzureDevOpsService.AddRelationshipAsync method and moved to Julmar.AzDOUtilities.
1.01-pre	Optimized some calling paths for async.
1.0-pre	Initial public release.

AzureDevOpsFactory

The AzureDevOpsFactory is the starting point for accessing Azure DevOps data with .NET. The Create method returns a IAzureDevOpsService object and takes a URL to the AzDO site and an access token.

using Julmar.AzDOUtilities;

...

IAzureDevOpsService service = AzureDevOpsFactory.Create("https://myvsts.microsoft.com/", accessToken);

var workItems = await service.QueryAsync("SELECT [System.Title], [System.AssignedTo] FROM [WorkItems] WHERE [System.TeamProject] = 'MyProject'"
	                                   + " AND [System.State] = 'Closed'");
foreach (var wi in workItems)
{
	Console.WriteLine($"WorkItem: {wi.Id} - {wi.Title} assigned to {wi.AssignedTo}.");
}

Notice you specify the fields to retrieve as part of the query. It's recommended to only ask for what you need. All properties in the WorkItem type are nullable - anything not asked for won't be returned by the Azure DevOps REST API. If you want the complete object (all fields defined for each instance), you can use SELECT * FROM [WorkItems] with any WHERE clause to constrain the results.

LINQ queries

There's a LINQ provider built into the library which allows you to work directly with the wrapper objects as IQueryable<T> types. Most expressions are translated directly to Azure DevOps queries, and what cannot be translated is handled locally on the returned items as part of the processing. This support let's you work with either the fluent method syntax or C# LINQ syntax.

To get a queryable collection, use the AzureDevOpsFactory.CreateQuery<T> method. It takes an IAzureDevOpsService instance and an optional project name. The provider will automatically supply the [System.TeamProject] part of the WHERE clause if you supply that parameter. If you pass null for that parameter, you will need to add the project to each Where() clause.

The T generic parameter must be a AzDOUtilities.WorkItem type. You can supply a specific wrapper to access a custom WorkItem type as part of your project, or use the base WorkItem type to pull multiple types.

var db = AzureDevOpsFactory.CreateQuery<WorkItem>(service, "MyProject");

var query = db.Where(wi => wi.State == "Closed");
var workItems = query.ToList(); // query executed here.

...

var query = from wi in db
   	        where wi.State == "Closed"
   	        order by wi.Id
   	        select wi.Id;
var workItems = query.ToList(); // query executed here.

Note: When using LINQ queries, all fields are always returned by the query. There is no projection support at this time.

Creating a custom WorkItem wrapper object

You can define your own WorkItem-type by deriving a class from the AzDOUtilities.WorkItem type and adding a AzDOWorkItem attribute to tie it to a specific WorkItem type in your Azure DevOps project. It must also have a public, default constructor.

You can tie custom fields to your properties using the [AzDOUtilities.AzDOField] attribute. All defined fields should be marked as nullable types. Here's an example:

[AzDOWorkItem("CustomWorkItem")]
public class CustomWorkItem : WorkItem
{
    [AzDOField("Custom.LabEnabled")]
    public bool? LabEnabled { get; set; }
    [AzDOField("Custom.LabType")]
    public string? LabType { get; set; }
    ...

    public CustomWorkItem()
    {
    	// Must have a public, default constructor so the lib can create.
    }
}

If you create a custom WorkItem type, you should also add an assembly-level attribute AzDORegister to one source file. This will expose your custom wrapper type to the library so that the QueryAsync<WorkItem> method can return objects based on your type. Note this is only necessary if you're mixing returned WorkItem types. Essentially, when a WorkItem is returned by the underlying REST API, the WorkItemType field will be matched to all registered types. If a match is found, the given wrapper will be created and populated with the returned data.

You only need a single register attribute for all your types as shown here.

// Register our custom work item types with the lib.
[assembly: AzDORegister(typeof(CustomWorkItem), typeof(OtherWorkItem), ...)]

Field conversions

The library can convert intrinsic types without any help, but sometimes you want to express the property with something different than the field. You can do this by supplying a converter. Tell the library to use a converter by setting the Converter property on the AzDOFieldAttribute.

[AzDOField("Custom.CertificationExam", Converter = typeof(CommaSeparatedConverter))]
public List<string>? CertificationExams { get; set; }

Note: DateTime values are automatically converted to and from local time from UTC.

The supplied Type object must implement IFieldConverter interface:

public interface IFieldConverter
{
    object Convert(object value, Type toType);
    object ConvertBack(object value);
}

The Convert method is called with the raw AzureDevOps value and the destination (target property) type. The ConvertBack method is called with the property value to get an object that can be used to compare or update the WorkItem field to the property. Comparisons are done by comparing the original field value to the existing property value. By default, a direct (value) comparison is performed. If a converter is on the property, the ConvertBack is called first. Optionally, the converter can implement the IFieldComparer interface, in which case this is used to do a comparions of the two values.

public interface IFieldComparer
{
    bool Compare(object initialValue, object currentValue);
}

Built-in converters

There are several built-in converters:

• IdentityRefConverter: this is applied to fields such as AssignedTo which return an identity to transform it to a string.
• SemicolonSeparatedConverter: this can be used to turn a semi-colon separated list (such as a picker) to a List<string> or string[].
• CommaSeparatedConverter: this can be used to turn a comma separated list to a List<string> or string[].

Selecting fields

There's no need to specify the fields to select with the higher-level API (LINQ or IAzureDevOpsService). Selecting Id by itself will still populate the full object. The library will scan the defined properties and AzDOFieldAttribute objects to determine the valid fields and automatically request those from Azure DevOps as part of the query.

Note: this behavior means the fields you decorate your properties with must be defined in your Azure DevOps project. A misnamed field will generate a runtime error. The field doesn't have to be in the WorkItem type - it just needs to be defined.