Managing Jenkins Jobs with the python‑jenkins API

This guide introduces the python-jenkins library (available on PyPI) for interacting with a Jenkins server via its REST API using Python 3.7.

Key capabilities include creating, copying, deleting, updating jobs; managing builds, nodes, credentials, views, plugins; retrieving configuration and status information; and performing administrative actions such as quiet‑down and script execution.

Typical workflow starts with installing the library ( pip install python-jenkins==1.6.0), creating a Jenkins object, and then calling methods like create_job, copy_job, build_job, etc.

Do‑operations (actions) are grouped in tables in the original article; for example, job operations use methods create_job, disable_job, delete_job, copy_job, enable_job, job_exists, jobs_count, upsert_job. Similar groups exist for builds, credentials, views, nodes, promotions, queue handling, Jenkinsfile syntax checking, and updates.

Get‑operations (queries) include methods such as get_all_jobs, get_job_info, get_build_info, get_credential_info, get_node_info, get_plugin_info, get_version, get_whoami, and others.

Update operations cover actions like quiet_down, reconfig_credential, reconfig_job, reconfig_node, reconfig_view, rename_job, run_script, and set_next_build_number.

Demo example : after creating a sample job, the tutorial shows how to retrieve its config.xml, duplicate the job, and verify creation with server.job_exists("demo-test-02"). It also provides a full script that logs into Jenkins, copies a template job, replaces a parameter value (e.g., changing <defaultValue>svn</defaultValue> to <defaultValue>git</defaultValue>), and creates a new job.

Running the script produces console output confirming the new job’s existence and displays the generated XML configuration, illustrating how to automate project provisioning in a CI/CD environment.