How can I get a reference to the TFS WorkItem in a WorkItemChangedEvent?

Question

Seems like this would be super simple, but I'm struggling to find what I need.

I'm implementing a TFS 2013 event handler and simply want to get a reference to the Work Item that raised the change event. It seems easy enough to get the title, but I can't find a property or method in the event signature objects that gives me either a reference to the WorkItem object or the information I'd need to go query it (e.g. the ID).

public EventNotificationStatus ProcessEvent(
         TeamFoundationRequestContext requestContext, 
         NotificationType notificationType, 
         object notificationEventArgs, 
         out int statusCode, 
         out string statusMessage, 
         out ExceptionPropertyCollection properties)
    {          
        var ev = notificationEventArgs as WorkItemChangedEvent;
        string WorkItemTitle = ev.WorkItemTitle; /* easy enough */

        /*********** need help with this bit *********/
        int ChangedWorkItemID = ???
              OR
        WorkItem ChangedWorkItem= ???
    }

Note: this code has been stripped down to bare bones to make it easier to read and focus on the problem at hand.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 14 '17 at 17:38

I found a way to do this. It isn't as elegant as I'd like, but it works. I'm definitely interested if anyone has a better answer.

Here's what worked for the benefit of anyone else with the same question.

You can get the Work Item's ID from the CoreFields.IntegerFields collection on the notificationEventArgs (of type WorkItemChangedEvent) passed into the event handler. Using that you can get the WorkItem from the WorkItemStore's GetWorkItem method.

Note: The item you want has a field name of "ID", and it appears that it is always element 0 in the collection, but I didn't trust that always to be true so I searched on the name property using LINQ just in case. Here's a code snippet of the whole affair.

IntegerField idField =  ev.CoreFields.IntegerFields
                          .Where<IntegerField>(field => field.Name.Equals("ID"))
                          .FirstOrDefault<IntegerField>();

int WorkItemID=  idField.NewValue;

//Assuming you have an initialized WorkItemStore Object here
 workItemStore.GetWorkItem(WorkItemID);

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 08 '17 at 23:23

You can get the ID by using the following code:

// Get the ID of the work item that was just changed by the user.
int workItemId = ev.CoreFields.IntegerFields[0].NewValue;

Without having to connect to the project or the workitem store. It's a little bit simpler than the accepted answer.

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 30 '15 at 05:27

So what you are getting in the event is only some of the core fields and the changed values. At the beginning of your event handler do this

Uri projectCollectionUri = new Uri(settings.TFSServerURL + projectCollectionFolder);
TfsTeamProjectCollection projectCollection = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(projectCollectionUri);
WorkItemStore wiStore = projectCollection.GetService<WorkItemStore>();

So notice the settings.TFSServerURL this is in the app.config that goes with the DLL. I was using two TFS server, but you can potentially cough hard code the TFS Url cough after you do those 3 lines, you can now do this

eventWorkItem = wiStore.GetWorkItem(workItemId);

This will give you access to the full work items with all it's property.

To access fields other than the core field access them this way for example

eventWorkItem.Fields["Activity Date"].Value

The trouble with this answer is that it assumes I have the workItemId. I know how to get a work item with that information. The question is about getting that far. — JohnFx, Jan 30 '15 at 05:26
Which you figured out in you self answer. You have to cast it as a WorkItemChangedEvent. to get intellisence and property mapping. — Etienne, Feb 02 '15 at 14:25

How can I get a reference to the TFS WorkItem in a WorkItemChangedEvent?

3 Answers3

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