Regex support in JIRA-CLI

[David Allen]

What I really want is either regex support in JQL or the ability to filter the results from a query with a regex. However, I am fairly sure that doesn't exist and is unlikely to appear any time soon.

I am starting with a question to verify there isn't an acceptable solution before raising an enhancement request (I couldn't find one).

It seems more plausible at least in the short term that a partial solution could be made available through the JIRA CLI. As far as I can see, it is possible to use a query or a saved search (filter) but nothing more. I would find it useful if there were a way to filter the query results by comparing information in each issue against a regex. Ideally, I could specify searching the summary, description and/or comments (some might want fields but that's not a current requirement for me). This could be applied whenever a search is used.

As well as using this directly in the CLI, it would be possible to add a command to generate a new search that would give the same results by looking for the issue ids. That could be pasted into the JIRA web interface. That might be considered to be too hacky.

I realise this would perform poorly on large query result sets.

So:

• Does anything like this exist (as an external program or in OnDemand, not as a plugin).
• Are there any existing requests in this area.

[Bob Swift · Accepted solution]

1. It not difficult to write a little groovy (or other) script that filters the CSV returned from JCLI getIssueList that could do a regex match on one or more fields or any other custom logic you have. If groovy, then the helper library shipping with GINT - Groovy Integration Test Framework has a lot of csv related capabilities.
2. Certainly fair enough to create an improvement request on the JCLI to do additional filtering automatically without doing a script. You are right that this would be after the fact filtering and would not be as good a performance as native JQL support. It would be relatively easy to do regex matches on data, but what part of the data - just the summary, all the data? How would you like that specified? Create an issue with the details.