How to build Start vNext from Powershell and fetch artifacts

Question

In order to automate our deployments, I would like to rebuild an application, based on a given ChangeSetId. Once this build has completed, I want to get the artifacts of the build (the .exe), so we can deploy them. For the sake of the question I am focussing on the 'Get artifacts from build' part.

For DevOps purposes, I'd like to use PowerShell, since it should be able to access the TFS API libraries and because MS recommends using it.

Environment

I've set up Builds in our On Premise TFS 2015 server (which are working neatly) - and added a VSO task 'Publish artifacts' after this build. So far so good. The published artifacts is are to be stored on the Server, which basically means I have to download the artifacts connected to build - every existing build will have its artifacts linked - which is better then an UNC drop in my book.

No comes my challenge; how do I programmaticaly access these artifacts, step 3?

1. Get Sources for ChangeSetId
2. MSBuild application with given configuration
3. Get build Artifacts using PowerShell
4. Deploy to environment using Release Management (Powershell as well)

Answer 1

TFS 2015 comes with the new REST API, and it includes the method to get the artifacts of the specific build. I would approach your challenge in the following way:

• Add a "PowerShell script" build step after your "Publish artifacts" step
• In that PowerShell script:
  • Get the ID of the current build. TFS exposes a number of predefined variables, and build ID is there. All those variables end up as environment variable, and this post can help you read the appropriate one from your PowerShell script
  • Next, make a web request to get build artifacts. As you can see from the API description, you'll have to provide just the build ID
  • Then, parse the JSON response - the downloadUrl property contains the link to download all the artifacts of the build zipped as a single archive
  • Finally, extract the archive and pick up those artifacts you need. Perhaps, you'd like to deploy it to your testing environment in this step as well

Hope this helps.