I’m working with JIRA for issue tracking and have created a Python script that processes JIRA task reports. Currently I export XML data manually from the Views section and my Python code transforms this into MS Access database entries for integration with other systems.
The manual export process works fine but I want to automate the report generation step. My goal is to fetch JIRA data programmatically using Python without having to manually export from the web interface each time.
Ideally I’d like to get the data in XML format that matches what JIRA exports through the Views menu. I’m wondering if there are Python libraries or JIRA REST API endpoints that can help with this automation.
Has anyone worked with similar automation tasks? I’ve heard about JQL queries and various JIRA Python tools but I’m not sure which approach would work best for generating reports that match the standard JIRA export format.
Any suggestions or experience with automating JIRA report generation would be really helpful.
I’ve been automating JIRA exports for two years now. Best approach I’ve found is combining the atlassian-python-api library with custom XML formatting - way more reliable than other methods. Here’s the thing: JIRA’s standard export XML structure can be replicated by mapping REST API field responses correctly. I ran into problems early on because the API spits out nested JSON objects that don’t translate directly to the flat XML structure you get from manual exports. What fixed it was building a field mapping dictionary that transforms API responses to match your existing XML schema. Game changer. Performance tips: batch your requests for large datasets. JIRA will throttle you hard if you try pulling too many issues at once. Also cache frequently accessed data - report generation crawls if you’re hammering the API repeatedly. One gotcha: authentication setup is totally different between JIRA Cloud and Server versions. Double-check which endpoints and auth methods your instance actually supports before you start.
I hit the same issue a few months back when moving from manual JIRA exports to automated reports. The JIRA REST API with JQL queries worked best for me. I tried several approaches but ended up using the requests library directly instead of third-party JIRA packages - gave me way better control over the data format. The tricky part was nailing down the JQL syntax that matched my manual view filters, then converting the JSON response to XML format for my existing code. Watch out for authentication though - if your company uses SSO or tight security, you’ll probably need API tokens or OAuth instead of basic auth. The API docs are pretty dense, but once you get that first connection working, adding different report types is easy. Start with a simple query to test your auth setup before building out the full pipeline.
the jira-python lib was super helpful for this! it makes everything way simpler than using raw REST calls, and sort of handles auth for u. just pip install it and pulling data with simple queries is super easy. u might have to convert from JSON to XML tho, but there’s libs for that.
Tried something similar for automating JIRA reports and ended up using the REST API with Python—it lets you pull XML data pretty close to what the Views export gives. Linking it with https://acupowererp.com/products/jira-and-acumatica-cloud-erp for billing and time tracking made the workflow way smoother. Once set up, the script automatically updates the MS Access database and keeps everything synced without having to touch the web interface.