In Jenkins, how do builds know who requested them?

Question

I need to pass the username of the requester of a build down to the script that is actually doing the work. Looking at the console output for a particular build, the first line is always "Started by user foo," so Jenkins is clearly keeping track of who triggered the build. So it should be possible to pass that information down to the job. The question is, how?

score 16 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 16 '12 at 12:05

16

user30997

Please check out Jenkins Build User Vars plugin, it does what you need:

It is used to set following user build variables:

BUILD_USER – full name of user started build,
BUILD_USER_FIRST_NAME – first name of user started build,
BUILD_USER_LAST_NAME – last name of user started build,
BUILD_USER_ID – id of user started build.

answered Feb 16 '12 at 12:05

Milkywayfarer

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its not working for me, jenkins says `Unrecognized macro 'BUILD_USER'` even plugin is installed – To Kra Jan 20 '17 at 10:12
I tried like this and it worked perfectly https://stackoverflow.com/a/51725531/3002336 – Anand Varkey Philips Aug 09 '18 at 03:16

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '11 at 18:56

The username isn't put in an easy-to-fetch environment variable, but you can get it using the xml (or json or python) api - as soon as you start a build, http://[jenkins-server]/job/[job-name]/[build-number]/api/xml is populated with details:

<freeStyleBuild>
    <action>
        <cause>
            <shortDescription>Started by user foobar</shortDescription>
            <userName>foobar</userName>
        </cause>
    </action>
    <building>true</building>
    [...]

warvariuc · Answer 3 · 2016-02-08T10:38:55.650

4

I tried to use Jenkins Build User Vars plugin and notify a HipChat room that a build was started by a certain user, but BUILD_USER variable was not available to HipChat plugin, possibly because HipChat action happened before Build User Vars plugin injects the variable.

So I installed pre-scm-buildstep plugin and added:

enter image description here ]

// Inject environment variables using Groovy

import hudson.model.*

def build = Thread.currentThread().executable
def userCause = build.getCause(hudson.model.Cause$UserIdCause)
def userName = userCause?.userId ?: 'Jenkins'

def envVars = ['BUILD_USER': userName]

for (item in envVars) {
  build.addAction(new ParametersAction([
    new StringParameterValue(item.key, item.value)
  ]))
}

edited Feb 08 '16 at 10:38

answered Jan 15 '16 at 08:57

warvariuc

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THANK YOU. Jenkins makes this WAY harder than it should be. I don't see "Execute system Groovy script" as one of the options for "Rub buildstep before SCM runs." Any idea how to either get that or do the same thing without Groovy? – Chuck Batson Jan 20 '16 at 19:48
1

Never mind, found the Groovy plugin here: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Groovy+plugin – Chuck Batson Jan 20 '16 at 19:56

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 16 '15 at 14:35

3

In your Job add "Execute system Groovy script":

def yourUserName = build.causes[0].userId

edited Apr 16 '15 at 14:35

Soner Gönül

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answered Apr 16 '15 at 14:27

Mounirovsky

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score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 15 '17 at 06:40

3

I managed to get it (on Jenkins 2.58):

currentBuild.getRawBuild().getCauses()[0].getUserId()

Of course you need to set permissions in Jenkins to be able to call these methods. It's not always the 0th Cause object you are looking for, e.g. it may be another one if you replay another user's build (did not test this).

edited Jun 15 '17 at 06:40

Nathan Tuggy

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answered Jun 15 '17 at 06:05

Attila123

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 19 '13 at 12:51

import os
import jenkinsapi.build
import jenkinsapi.jenkins

#Required Environment variables example:
#JENKINS_URL=http://jenkinsserver/
#JOB_NAME=TEST_GT
#BUILD_NUMBER=8

jenkins_inst = None

def get_jenkins_inst():
    if jenkins_inst == None:
        jenkins_url = os.environ['JENKINS_URL']
        print("Connect to jenkins " + jenkins_url)
        jenkins_inst = jenkinsapi.jenkins.Jenkins(jenkins_url)
    return jenkins_inst

def get_jenkins_job():
    jenkins_inst = get_jenkins_inst()

    jenkins_job_name = os.environ['JOB_NAME']
    print("Get jenkins job " + jenkins_job_name)
    return jenkins_inst.get_job(jenkins_job_name)

def get_jenkins_user():
    jenkins_job = get_jenkins_job()

    jenkins_buildno = int(os.environ['BUILD_NUMBER'])
    print("Get jenkins job build " + str(jenkins_buildno))
    cur_build = jenkins_job.get_build(jenkins_buildno)

    return cur_build.get_actions()['causes'][0]['userId']

In Jenkins, how do builds know who requested them?

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