Managing Jenkins with the python-jenkins API

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

Features

Create, copy, delete, update, enable/disable jobs

Start builds, retrieve build information, manage build numbers

Manage nodes, views, credentials, promotions, and plugins

Control Jenkins server (quiet down, shutdown) and query version, queue, and running builds

Usage Workflow

1. Install the library: pip install python-jenkins==1.6.0 2. Open a Python interpreter and connect to Jenkins:

import jenkins
server = jenkins.Jenkins("http://127.0.0.1:8080", username="admin", password="admin")
print(server.get_whoami())

3. List available methods with dir(server) to explore the API.

Method Reference

Function

Python Method

Job operations

create_job, copy_job, delete_job, disable_job, enable_job, job_exists, upsert_job, ...

Build operations

build_job, delete_build, stop_build, get_build_info, get_build_console_output, ...

Credential operations

create_credential, delete_credential, credential_exists, get_credential_info, ...

View operations

create_view, delete_view, view_exists, get_view_config, ...

Node operations

create_node, delete_node, enable_node, disable_node, get_node_info, ...

Promotion operations

create_promotion, delete_promotion, promotion_exists, ...

Update operations

reconfig_job, reconfig_node, reconfig_view, reconfig_credential, set_next_build_number, ...

Example: Creating a New Job

Retrieve the XML configuration of an existing job and reuse it to create a new one:

config_xml = server.get_job_config("demo-test")
server.create_job("demo-test-02", config_xml)
print(server.job_exists("demo-test-02"))  # True

Example: Copying a Job

server.copy_job("demo-test-02", "demo-test-03")
print(server.job_exists("demo-test-03"))  # True

Example Script: Adding a Parameter to a New Project

The script below checks if a target job exists, copies the configuration from a template, replaces the default VCS type from svn to git, adds a srcType parameter, and creates the new job.

import jenkins

server = jenkins.Jenkins("http://127.0.0.1:8080", "admin", "admin")

defProjectName = "demo-devops-service"
newProjectName = "demo-test-service"

if not server.job_exists(newProjectName):
    config_xml = server.get_job_config(defProjectName)
    newconfig_xml = config_xml.replace("<defaultValue>svn</defaultValue>", "<defaultValue>git</defaultValue>")
    server.create_job(newProjectName, newconfig_xml)
    print("Project created")
else:
    print("Project already exists!")

Running the script produces the modified config.xml with the added srcType parameter and confirms the job creation.

Conclusion

The python-jenkins library provides a comprehensive set of functions to automate Jenkins administration tasks, making it easy to script job creation, configuration changes, and server management directly from Python.