Any way to construct a url to a particular file in the jenkins workspace?

[David Karr]

When a Jenkins build completes, I can navigate to "Workspaces" to manually inspect files in the workspace.  While I'm navigating that tree, and viewing specific files, I can see that the current browser url goes directly to that point in the tree, and to the specific file I am viewing.

Is there a practical way in a Jenkins scripted pipeline, to CONSTRUCT a url to a file in the workspace so I can print it out in the log, to enable a single click to get to a particular file?

[David Karr]

I do notice that my build has a "BUILD_URL" var in the environment, so that gives me the "prefix" of the url, but the url to the file in the workspace has pieces like the following after the BUILD_URL value: "/execution/node/22/ws/". I don't see anything else in the environment that can help me construct that part of the url.

[Björn Pedersen]

Hi,

no, not really. Especially as  workspaces typically are reused between jobs such an URL would be at leas open to surprise.  Best practice is to archive such files (log output, generated files. ) as  artifacts to get persistence. 

Björn

[Jerome Godbout]

Some helper I made for my scripted:

Path conversion:

def ToWindowsPath(path) {

return path.replace("/", "\\");

}

def ToUnixPath(path) {

return path.replace("\\","/");

}

def ToNativePath(path) {

if(isUnix()) {

return ToUnixPath(path);

}

return ToWindowsPath(path);

}

def RemoveLastChar(str) {

return str.substring(0, str.length() - 1);

}

def RemoveFirstChar(str) {

return str.substring(1, str.length());

}

Joining path part:

def PathJoin(path1, path2) {

String p1 = ToUnixPath(path1);

String p2 = ToUnixPath(path2);

if(p1.length() > 1 && p1.endsWith("/")) {

p1 = RemoveLastChar(p1);

}

if(p2.startsWith("/")) {

p2 = RemoveFirstChar(p2);

}

if(p1 == "/") {

return p1 + p2;

}

if(p1.length() == 0) {

return p2;

}

if(p2.length() == 0) {

return p1;

}

return p1 + "/" + p2;

}

def PathsJoin(paths) {

String result_path = "";

if(paths instanceof List && paths.size() > 0) {

result_path = paths[0];

for(int i = 1; i < paths.size(); ++i) {

result_path = PathJoin(result_path, paths[i]);

}

}

return result_path;

}

And to get the workspace root, you can use the pwd command, when the script start onto the node, the current dir is the workspace, so you could save it into a var with pwd command at the beginning. After use the path join above to recreate some path.

https://www.jenkins.io/doc/pipeline/steps/workflow-basic-steps/#pwd-determine-current-directory

[David Karr]

Thanks for the reply, but I think you've misunderstood the problem.  Getting, using, and publishing the filesystem path to the file is not a problem. What I need to do is create a functional url to that file, which I can print in the Jenkins build output, which a user can click to get to that file.

[Jerome Godbout]

Humm, that would be hard and security unwise. The executing node path aren't available to the web. If you are on a secure local network and you really want to go down that road, you need to 

1. mount the slave nodes into the master node local path that would be accessible by the jenkins web process. 
2. You need to expose those path to the web master node (this is a security breach). 
3. You would have to make relative path from the node, then recreate the path to the web local web path.

I think it would be easier to just gather artifacts and make them available to jenkins results. 

Example from the number above:

slave node (SLAVE1) path: /myjenkinsworkspace/projectA/MyPathIWant

master node mount (do this for every slave node you need): $SLAVE1:/myjenkinsworkspace /MyJenkinsSlaveAccess/Slave1

Expose the whole /MyJenkinsSlaveAccess/ to the Jenkins web (this is a huge security breach), depend how you serve the jenkins to the web, configure the share (build in, ngix, apache...)

then convert the MyPathIWant to a valid jenkins url:

/myjenkinsworkspace/projectA/MyPathIWant --> http://myjenkins/MyJenkinsSlaveAccess/Salve1/MyPathIWant

That would work, but I would not recommand that.

[Daniel Beck]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:49 PM Jerome Godbout <jerome.god...@gmail.com> wrote:

Humm, that would be hard and security unwise. The executing node path aren't available to the web.

They are in the case of workspace files (to users with appropriate permissions).

I think the problem is that it's difficult to obtain the pipeline node ID for the `node` step allocating the workspace.

Between the BUILD_URL and WORKSPACE (the prefix of the path to remove), the rest should be known.

[Björn Pedersen]

I the another problem that is more important (at least in general): The workspace is not persisted as part of the job, instead it

 may well get reused  and/or cleaned once the job is finished. So clicking the link on an older job may well get you the file from 

a newer run. That's why I really recommend to just archive this file as artifact and use the artifact link( which is stable and easier to construct)

instead.

Björn

 

[David Karr]

I'm not familiar with the archive process. If you could provide me some quick links for information, that would be useful. I'll also ask our internal ops team.

[Björn Pedersen]

I'm not familiar with the archive process. If you could provide me some quick links for information, that would be useful. I'll also ask our internal ops team.

Archiving is not something  special, it's a standard feature.

in a scripted pipeline: 

archiveArtifacts artifacts: '**/*.log' 

(just use the script builder for more help)

link to:

$BUILD_URL/artifact/<our local path>/<filename>

Björn

[David Karr]

That "our local path" thing is not clear to me. What exactly would that be?  If the file I create is in the root directory of the workspace , would that "local path" be empty?

[Björn Pedersen]

That "our local path" thing is not clear to me. What exactly would that be?  If the file I create is in the root directory of the workspace , would that "local path" be empty?

Correct. The pathes you specify are relative to the workspace part. To check just compare the