Greenhopper, Jira, and REST

One of the somewhat frustrating problems I'm dealing with in Greenhopper is that I want the ability to treat a linked issue like a subtask, but without all the restrictions of a subtask.  Subtasks have at least three limitations that get in my way:

1. They must be in the same project as their parent
2. They must have the same permissions (issue-level security) as their parent
3. They must be of an issue type that is flagged as a "subtask" type, so for example, a "Feature" cannot be a subtask of a "Story" unless you create a separate "Feature (subtask)" issues type.

Issue #1 is probably the most frustrating, because product management and the exec team at a software company think in terms of high-level features or use cases for which the implementation will often cross project boundaries.  (An example at Eucalyptus is that a new use case may require changes to both Eucalyptus and Euca2ools.)

The Greenhopper UI operates mostly via a REST API, and so far this API is not well documented.  Last night I got around this lack of documentation by using mitmproxy to monitor calls while moving issues up and down the planning page in Greenhopper's Rapid Board.  Then I added a simple rest client class to jiranemo based on restkit.  I made two helper functions: one to get the rest representation of an issue, and another to change the rank of an issue in Greenhopper.   My script looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
import pyjira
from jiranemo import jiracfg

# Set the exception hook to enter a debugger on
# uncaught exceptions
from jiranemo.lib import util
sys.excepthook = util.genExcepthook(debug=True,
                                    debugCtrlC=True)

# Read ${HOME}/.jirarc, and set up clients and auth caches.
cfg = jiracfg.JiraConfiguration(readConfigFiles=True)
authorizer = pyjira.auth.CachingInteractiveAuthorizer(cfg.authCache)
ccAuthorizer = pyjira.auth.CookieCachingInteractiveAuthorizer(cfg.cookieCache)
client = pyjira.JiraClient(cfg.wsdl, 
                           (cfg.user, cfg.password), 
                           authorizer=authorizer, 
                           webAuthorizer=ccAuthorizer)

# Do a simple JQL query via the SOAP client, return 20 results
issues = client.client.getIssuesFromJqlSearch(
    '''project = "system testing 2" order by Rank DESC''', 20)
for x in issues:
    # Get the REST representation of each issue, because links
    # aren't shown in the SOAP representation
    rest_issue = client.restclient.get_issue(x.key)

    for link in rest_issue['fields']['issuelinks']:
      if link['type'].has_key('inward') and \
         link['type']['inward'] == "is blocked by":
        # Rank the linked issue above this one in Greenhopper
        result = client.restclient.gh_rank(link['inwardIssue']['key'], 
                                           before=rest_issue['key'])

The code could use some error checking, but this is a pretty simple starting point for doing something that Jira and Greenhopper can't do on their own.