Modifying Work Item Type definition using the Object Model

To get the definition of a given Work Item Type and add a field, it’s not complicated:

2412 // Get the Xml Document for the given WIT

 2413 XmlDocument doc = wit.Export(false);

 2414 XmlElement fields = doc.SelectSingleNode("*/WORKITEMTYPE/FIELDS") as XmlElement;

2415 

2416 // Look for each field, and add the ones that are not present

2417 XmlElement field = fields.SelectSingleNode("FIELD[@refname="Cegedim.ParentWI"]") as XmlElement;

2418 if (field == null)

2419 {

2420     field = doc.CreateElement("FIELD");

2421     field.SetAttribute("name", "ParentWI");

2422     field.SetAttribute("refname", "Cegedim.ParentWI");

2423     field.SetAttribute("type", "Integer");

2424     field.InnerXml = "The ID of the Parent Work Item";

2425     fields.AppendChild(field);

2426 }

To validate the type before importing it:

2453 WITValidateSucceed = true;

2454 prj.WorkItemTypes.ImportEventHandler += new ImportEventHandler(WorkItemType_ValidationEventHandler);

2455 WorkItemType.Validate(prj, doc.OuterXml);

2456 if (WITValidateSucceed == false)

2457 {

2458     MessageBox.Show("Work Item Type couldn’t pass validation, something went wrong", "Work Item Creator", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);

2459     return false;

2460 }

The registered event will be fired if the validation failed. Why the Validate method doesn’t return a bool, I don’t know…

2473 void WorkItemType_ValidationEventHandler(object sender, ImportEventArgs e)

2474 {

2475     WITValidateSucceed = e.Severity == ImportSeverity.Error;

2476 }

Then, you’ll have to call Import from the WorkItemTypes collection to update your type:

2461 prj.WorkItemTypes.Import(doc.OuterXml);

prj being your Work Item “Project” instance.

Now there’s a small trick and if you don’t know it, you’ll be like me, wasting 2 hours trying to figuring out why your application is totally crashing when you try to modify two WITs in a row.

Importing an existing WIT will update the server side, but apparently the definition of your WITs are cached in local, and this cache is not updated by the Import method (it could have been…), so if you try to modify a second WIT, somehow the Team System Object Mode doesn’t like it!
The solution is not that hard though, after your import, you only have to call these two methods:

2401 m_WIS.RefreshCache();

2402 m_WIS.SyncToCache();

m_WIS being your instance of the Work Item Store. This way you local version is updated, and you can keep working on WIT modification!