Getting parent of work item through REST API

Question

We are developing an Azure DevOps extension to push changes to work items to an external system.

We would like to maintain/preserve the hierarchy in Azure DevOps (Epic-> Feature -> PBI/Bug) in the target system, so we need to figure out which parent a work item has.

When pulling the Work item entity from the API, it looks like this (abbreviated a bit)

{
    "id": 5202,
    "rev": 2,
    "fields": {
        "System.WorkItemType": "Task",
        "System.State": "To Do",
        "System.Reason": "New task",
        "System.CreatedDate": "2017-10-30T10:18:06.233Z",
        "System.CreatedBy": "Jesper Lund Stocholm",
        "Microsoft.VSTS.Common.Priority": 2,
        "Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork": 23.0,
        "Microsoft.VSTS.Common.StateChangeDate": "2017-10-30T10:18:06.233Z",
    },
    "_links": {
            "self": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/5202"
        },
        "workItemUpdates": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/5202/updates"
        },
        "workItemRevisions": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/5202/revisions"
        },
        "workItemHistory": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/5202/history"
        },
        "html": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/web/wi.aspx?pcguid=e5d991b2-9879-497c-85fb-c618f144a9c5&id=5202"
        },
        "workItemType": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/6847ebed-cbca-4510-8baa-228c7c55ba8d/_apis/wit/workItemTypes/Task"
        },
        "fields": {
            "href": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/fields"
        }
    },
    "url": "https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/5202"
}

The obvious place to look is here https://{myorg}.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/fields

But we cannot find any traces of references to "parent entity".

Can it be true that this value is not exposed?

David Gardiner · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-06 05:48:45Z

39

You can get all the work items links (Parent, Childs etc.) by adding the $expand=relations to the api string.

For example:

https://shaykia.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/4?$expand=relations

In the result you will see "relations" section:

"relations": [
    {
      "rel": "System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Forward",
      "url": "http:/shaykia.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/11",
      "attributes": {
        "isLocked": false
      }
    },
    {
      "rel": "System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Reverse",
      "url": "http://shaykia.visualstudio.com/_apis/wit/workItems/3",
      "attributes": {
        "isLocked": false
      }
    }
  ],

System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Reverse is for for parent (in this case, the work item with id 3 he is the parent), and System.LinkTypes.Hierarchy-Forward is for child.

edited Aug 6, 2019 at 5:48

David Gardiner

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answered Sep 12, 2018 at 12:18

Shayki Abramczyk

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5 Comments

Jesper Lund Stocholm Over a year ago

Thank you, @shayki!

Andreas Over a year ago

@shayki How would I filter only those relations to get only those with specific attributes?

Shayki Abramczyk Over a year ago

@Andreas I don't think you can filter in the URL, you need to filter the result.

Jake12342134 Over a year ago

Is ?$expand=relations anywhere in the docs? I can't find it.

heringer Over a year ago

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/wit/work-items/…

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