Getting work items via TFS web services

Question

Hello.

I'm building an application using the TFS web services.

What I want to do is retrieve all of the work items for a certain user, past and present. What calls to what web services would I have to execute in order to get this?

Note: I can't use the TFS SDK, since I'm not developing on Windows.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi,

I think that it is not a good way to use the TFS Web Servers directly.

As you mentioned that you are not developing on Windows, my suggestion is that create your own web service on TFS App Tier, and  call your webservices in you client.

In your own web service, you can use TFS SDK to get the work item and then return the result to your client.

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Best regards,
Ruiz
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Answer 2

Hi Ruiz. Thanks for the reply.

 

Why is it not a good way to use the TFS web services directly?

Answer 3

Hi,

TFS Web Services are not designed for using directly. Also there is no document about these web services, it is diffcult to learn how to use them. To perform an operation, you have to call many web services, such as Authentication, but TFS SDK help you handle this.

 

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Best regards,
Ruiz
MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact msdnmg @ microsoft.com

Answer 4

Yeah, I did notice that there is almost no documentation on web services. Might be a silly question, but if they're not intended for direct use, why are they exposed? What part of the system is actually using them then?

To follow up on your previous answer, unfortunately installing anything on the TFS server or the TFS App Tier is not an option.

Cheers!

Answer 5

The TFS SDK is a client side API that wraps and handles the calls from the client to TFS trough the web services for you.   To use it you dont need to install anything extra on the serverside.

 

Answer 6

Hi Mattias.

The thing is that I cannot use the TFS SDK, since I'm building a mobile app. So I need some information on how to access the TFS web services (more specifically, how to get work items with the TFS WS).

Answer 7

Hi,

The webservices of TFS are used by TFS SDK.

Team EXplorer, Team System Web Access and TFS Sharepoint Extension all use TFS SDK API to communicate with App Tier, none of these applications call the web services directly.

If you want to use the webservices directly, I am very sorry that we cannot  supply more useful help.

When you installed TFS on app tier, TFS SDK is installed. so you do not have to install anything else on app tier. What you have to do is just deploy a Web Application using TFS SDK.

If you do not have permission to deploy web application on App Tier, you can deploy it on other machine.

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Best regards,
Ruiz
MSDN Subscriber Support in Forum
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact msdnmg @ microsoft.com

Answer 8

If you do not have permission to deploy web application on App Tier, you can deploy it on other machine.

Hi.

Yes, you could have the application installed on another machine, but I'm not sure if people would still put in the extra effort to actually do that. Just accessing the TFS directly through its web services would give a way better user experience, since they'd just have to get the application and that's it.

Making them install another application that needs to run on a computer that's running every time you need the info...I wouldn't bother with that, unless it'd be an open source project.

Cheers.