How can I extract file contents of a specific commit using Azure Devops API (Python)?

Question

Here's what I want to do: every time there is a commit to a specific branch in my repo, I want to extract all the YAML files being changed in that commit, make some modifications to their contents and then push the result as a PR into a new, separate branch. I have figured out most of the steps here, but I am stuck at the parsing commit file contents part. I have tried get_item_content and get_blob_content on a commit but I did not see any file being downloaded. So I specifically want to know:

1. if it's possible to get the changed files from a commit (NOT a PR) and parse them.
2. Or if not, then atleast I want to cherry-pick YAML file changes from the commit into a new branch and create a PR. Is cherry-picking specific files possible?

Answer 1

Yes, you can get the changed files from a commit (NOT a PR) and parse them. Please check the sample code below:

from azure.devops.connection import Connection
from msrest.authentication import BasicAuthentication
from azure.devops.v7_0.git.models import GitVersionDescriptor


# Set up connection
personal_access_token = 'PAT'
organization_url = 'https://dev.azure.com/ORGNAME'
credentials = BasicAuthentication('', personal_access_token)
connection = Connection(base_url=organization_url, creds=credentials)

# Get the Git client
git_client = connection.clients.get_git_client()
repository_id = 'REPOID'
commit_id = 'COMMITID'      # it's the 40-character string commit id

# Get the changes for the commit
changes = git_client.get_changes(commit_id, repository_id)

changed_files = [change['item']['path'] for change in changes.changes]


# Filter for YAML files
yaml_files = [file for file in changed_files if file.endswith('.yaml') or file.endswith('.yml')]
print(yaml_files)

# Get the contents of each YAML file
for file_path in yaml_files:
    version_descriptor = GitVersionDescriptor(version=commit_id, version_type='commit')
    item_content = git_client.get_item_content(repository_id, path=file_path, version_descriptor=version_descriptor)
    
    # Read the content from the generator
    content = b''.join(item_content).decode('utf-8')
    print(f"Contents of {file_path}:\n{content}")

It prints out the changed yaml file, and file content as below: