How can I set custom fields on issue creation?

[ankitpokhrel]

Jira supports a wide variety of datatypes when creating a custom field. Out of all formats mentioned in the Jira doc, the tool right now doesn't support Cascading select custom field, Single-user picker custom field and Multi-user picker custom field. Support for these missing types will be added based on the request and the usecase.

Details

The initialization process adds a section issue.fields.custom in the config to save required details about configured custom fields. You can only set custom fields that are available in the config. If any custom field is missing, you will have to re-generate the config or add the missing details manually.

You can use --custom flag to set values for custom fields. This flag accepts a key-value pair. The key is derived from the name you see in the configuration. This is the same name that you see in the UI making it easy to guess. Dash/hyphen (-) separated lowercase name is used as a key. The value depends on the datatype of the field. For some datatypes like string, datetime, date, option, the value is a plain string (eg: --custom note="An example note"). For array types, its a comma separated value (eg: --custom platform=iOS,Android).

Example

Given some custom fields as below:

Custom Field	Field Type	Comment
Due Date	Datetime	ISO 8601 ('YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD') format
Note	Paragraph	A single or multiline text input
Platform	Checkbox	Array of strings
Quarter	Radio button	Single value string data
Tags	Labels	Array of strings

You can use --custom flag to pass data for custom fields

$ jira issue create -tStory --custom story-points=3 --custom due-date="2022-03-10T14:39:00.000+1100" \
 --custom note="A custom note" --custom platform=Windows,Linux --custom quarter=Q3 --custom tags=p1,q3,y2022

# Or, alternatively

$ jira issue create -tStory --custom=story-points=3 --custom=due-date="2022-03-10T14:39:00.000+1100" \
 --custom=note="A custom note" --custom=platform=Windows,Linux --custom=quarter=Q3 --custom=tags=p1,q3,y2022

The example command above creates a story with defined custom fields of different types as seen in the screenshot below.

Caveats

The Jira API returns invalid types for some locked custom fields. For instance, for the sprint field the returned datatype is an array of strings or JSON depending on the Jira version used. However, that is not true since the create API expects a single numeric value for a sprint field.

In such cases, the config needs to be modified manually to make the field work.

# Details returned by the Jira API for sprint field
- name: Sprint
  key: customfield_10020
  schema:
     datatype: array
     items: json

# Manual change needed to make it work
- name: Sprint
  key: customfield_10020
  schema:
     datatype: number