Create a Pipeline with the Azure DevOps API

Creating an Azure Pipeline using the Azure DevOps REST API is possible, but badly documented. This post goes through how to do this; both using curl and using TypeScript.

If you're curious as to how to list pipelines, then check out my post on listing pipelines with the Azure DevOps API.

curling a pipeline

The documentation for creating an Azure Pipeline using the Azure DevOps API is somewhat lacking. It doesn't mention key parameters like repository and path which are necessary to create a correctly configured pipeline. However, whilst it isn't documented officially, it can be done. You just need the recipe.

Here's a curl to make you a pipeline:

Looking at the above there's two things you need:

1. A personal access token. You can make one of those here: https://dev.azure.com/organisation-name/_usersSettings/tokens (where organisation-name is the name of your organisation)
2. A makepipeline.json file, which contains the details of the pipeline you want to create:

Let's talk through the significant properties above:

• folder - can be null if you'd like the pipeline to be created in the root of Pipelines; otherwise provide the folder name. Incidentally a null will be translated into a value of \ which appears to be the magic value which represents the root.
• name - your pipeline needs a name
• path - this is the path to the yaml pipelines file in the repo. Note we're creating the pipeline itself here; what's actually in the pipeline sits in that file.
• repository.id - this is the guid that represents the repo you're creating the pipeline for. You can find this out by going to your equivalent https://dev.azure.com/organisation-name/project-name/_settings/repositories (substituting in appropriate values) and looking up your repository there.
• repository.name - the name of your repo

When you execute your curl you should be returned some JSON along these lines:

And inside Azure DevOps you'll now have a shiny new pipeline:

What if I want to use TypeScript?

If you'd like to do the same in TypeScript, you can use the azure-devops-node-api package. Just like the official documentaion, the package is short of the necessary parameters to create a pipeline such as repository and path. But by combining a little fetch with the azure-devops-node-api you can get the job done.

Here's a TypeScript example:

The above code:

1. Gets the repository id using the azure-devops-node-api
2. Creates a pipeline using fetch and the Azure DevOps REST API, with the types we've created to help us understand the shape of the data we're working with