TFS API - How to fetch work item(s) from specific Team Project

Question

I am trying to query a single team project in the main TfsTeamProjectCollection which contains 194 Team Projects in total. I know exactly how to get a WorkItem by Id from a WorkItemStore. The thing is, that by doing this, the API searches in ALL of the projects in the collection and the query takes about a minute. This is way too slow, there must be a way to query work items directly from a single team project ? Here is the code I have:

    private Uri collectionUri;
    private TfsTeamProjectCollection projectCollection;
    private WorkItemStore workItemStore;

    public Project GetTeamProject()
    {
        projectCollection = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(collectionUri);

        workItemStore = projectCollection.GetService<WorkItemStore>();
        Project teamProject = workItemStore.Projects[TFS_PROJECT_KEY];
        return teamProject;
    }

Now that I have the Team Project I'm interested in, how can I query for work items by ID or just get all work items in this project ?

it used to catch a nullpointerexception because the method would take a project id as a parameter, but I changed it. — Jean-François Beaulieu, Feb 13 '12 at 19:24
All you did is rethrow the exception, which is the same as not catching it at all. You should also never catch NullReferenceException, as it always means a programming error. — John Saunders, Feb 13 '12 at 19:25

score 35 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 13 '12 at 22:40

35

You could try something like this for getting all WIs within teamProject:

WorkItemCollection workItemCollection = workItemStore.Query(
     " SELECT [System.Id], [System.WorkItemType],"+    
     " [System.State], [System.AssignedTo], [System.Title] "+ 
     " FROM WorkItems " +
     " WHERE [System.TeamProject] = '" + teamProject.Name +
    "' ORDER BY [System.WorkItemType], [System.Id]");

And this to get a specific WorkItem ID:

WorkItem workItem = workItemStore.GetWorkItem(555);

answered Feb 13 '12 at 22:40

pantelif

8,524
2
33
48

Do you know what reference to add to the project for the query to be recognized? Because I already am using `Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client` and `Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client` and I get errors for everything in parameter of `workItemStore.Query()` – Jean-François Beaulieu Feb 14 '12 at 16:14
6

Note that, just as with SQL Queries, you can use @ParameterName to add parameters to your Team queries. Just add a Dictionary as last parameter with the name/value pairs and the WorkItemStore will make sure the data is properly escaped. (see also: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/bb140400(v=vs.80).aspx) – jessehouwing Feb 14 '12 at 20:51
I am just throwing it out there, if you want a specific work item you have to filter for it like so: " AND [System.Id] = " + workItemID; - that wasn't explicitly stated above, no biggy. – dyslexicanaboko Dec 12 '13 at 17:00

jessehouwing · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-13T20:08:13.480

15

It's probably most efficient to use a query to find the workitems you're interested in. You can add a Where project = '@Project' to the query to limit the scope to just that project. By first calling BeginQuery and then EndQuery you'll get a workitem collection for just the items you were looking for.

The easiest way to get the required wql query is to create a query in Team Explorer, then use file->save as (in edit mode) to save it to file. Open that file in Notepad to copy the query out of there.

Alternatively you can use the WorkItemStore.Query method directly to achieve the same thing.

edited Feb 13 '12 at 20:08

answered Feb 13 '12 at 19:56

jessehouwing

106,458
22
256
341

3

The saving of the wql query is a brilliant tip. Much easier to get your query right using Team Explorer GUI. You've saved me hours of messing about :-) – DaveF Sep 06 '12 at 08:27

TFS API - How to fetch work item(s) from specific Team Project

2 Answers2

Linked