Jenkins – From Jenkins, how to get a list of the currently running jobs in JSON

Jenkins

I can find out just about everything about my Jenkins server via the Remote API, but not the list of currently running jobs.

This, 

http://my-jenkins/computer/api/json

or

http://my-jenkins/computer/(master)/api/json

Would seem like the most logical choices, but they say nothing (other than the count of jobs) about which jobs are actually running.

Best Answer

There is often confusion between jobs and builds in Jenkins, especially since jobs are often referred to as 'build jobs'.

  • Jobs (or 'build jobs' or 'projects') contain configuration that describes what to run and how to run it.
  • Builds are executions of a job. A build contains information about the start and end time, the status, logging, etc.

See https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Building+a+software+project for more information.

If you want the jobs that are currently building (i.e. have one or more running builds), the fastest way is to use the REST API with XPath to filter on colors that end with _anime, like this:

http://jenkins.example.com/api/xml?tree=jobs[name,url,color]&xpath=/hudson/job[ends-with(color/text(),%22_anime%22)]&wrapper=jobs

will give you something like:

<jobs>
  <job>
    <name>PRE_DB</name>
    <url>http://jenkins.example.com/job/my_first_job/</url>
    <color>blue_anime</color>
  </job>
  <job>
    <name>SDD_Seller_Dashboard</name>
    <url>http://jenkins.example.com/job/my_second_job/</url>
    <color>blue_anime</color>
  </job>
</jobs>

Jenkins uses the color field to indicate the status of the job, where the _anime suffix indicates that the job is currently building.

Unfortunately, this won't give you any information on the actual running build. Multiple instances of the job maybe running at the same time, and the running build is not always the last one started.

If you want to list all the running builds, you can also use the REST API to get a fast answer, like this:

http://jenkins.example.com/computer/api/xml?tree=computer[executors[currentExecutable[url]],oneOffExecutors[currentExecutable[url]]]&xpath=//url&wrapper=builds

Will give you something like:

<builds>
  <url>http://jenkins.example.com/job/my_first_job/1412/</url>
  <url>http://jenkins.example.com/job/my_first_job/1414/</url>
  <url>http://jenkins.example.com/job/my_second_job/13126/</url>
</builds>

Here you see a list off all the currently running builds. You will need to parse the URL to separate the job name from the build number. Notice how my_first_job has two builds that are currently running.

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