How to extract a list of builds from devops using rest api that includes message info for manually triggered builds as well as auto builds

Question

I am using the azure devops rest api to extract a list of builds as follows

https://dev.azure.com/D{my Org}/{my project}/_apis/build/builds?api-version=5.1

this returns all the builds in the JSON extract correctly but only builds that have been automatically initiated by a merge to master include the build message details , included inside the trigger.info attribute of the json file.

builds that are manually fired do not have any trigger info at all

Example - see screen shot of 2 builds one fired automatically one manually

#sql-data-warehouse-20240229.3 • Merged PR 1082: FF-654: modified email body (automatically triggered)

Auto triggered creates results with a ci.message part included in the "triggerinfo" attribute in the json body

       "triggerInfo": {
            "ci.sourceBranch": "refs/heads/master",
            "ci.sourceSha": "4040759cee517f35abf2bf1b107e033e7c33bc93",
            **"ci.message": "Merged PR 1082: FF-654: modified email body",**
            "ci.triggerRepository": "d5b5f4d1-49b9-4457-b934-6dffc6932ce7"
        },
        "id": 5545,
        "buildNumber": "sql-data-warehouse-20240229.3",

manually triggered

#sql-data-warehouse-20240229.2 • Merged PR 1073: FF-654: scripts for dqm alert when fx traded (manually triggered)

        "triggerInfo": {},
        "id": 5537,
        "buildNumber": "sql-data-warehouse-20240229.2",

Json does not return anything in the "triggerinfo" attribute

What I am trying to do is extract a list of all builds including the message note created at build time for all builds.

I have tried a variety of API options and cannot locate the information I am after

Answer 1

This is the expected behavior, not all builds have ci.message. triggerInfo is the sourceprovider-specific information about what triggered the build. The reason that build is triggered is different, and the corresponding triggerInfo is also different.

You can refer to the following examples.

• "reason": "manual"

            "triggerInfo": {},

• "reason": "individualCI"

            "triggerInfo": {
                "ci.sourceBranch": "main",
                "ci.sourceSha": "***",
                "ci.message": "Set up CI with Azure Pipelines"
            },

• "reason": "pullRequest"

            "triggerInfo": {
                "pr.number": "93",
                "pr.isFork": "False",
                "pr.triggerRepository": "***",
                "pr.triggerRepository.Type": "TfsGit"
            },

• "reason": "resourceTrigger"

            "triggerInfo": {
                "artifactType": "Pipeline",
                "alias": "myresourcevars",
                "projectId": "***",
                "pipelineTriggerType": "PipelineCompletion",
                "source": "MainPipeline",
                "pipelineId": "***",
                "version": "20240228.2"
            },

• "reason": "schedule"

            "triggerInfo": {
                "scheduleName": "Trigger every 1 minutes test"
            },