How to retrieve child tasks from a JIRA ticket using XMLRPC API?

Other Questions Jira
1

I’m working with JIRA’s XMLRPC interface and can successfully retrieve tickets using their IDs. When I call fetchIssue(‘MYPROJ-401’), I get back all the standard fields like:

versions ......... : [buildDate,order,isReleased,isArchived,...]
owner ............ : '...'
modules .......... : ...
createdDate ...... : '2011-05-15 14:22:33.184'
customFields ..... : ...
details .......... : '...'
targetVersions ... : #()
ticketId ......... : '29451'
ticketKey ........ : 'MYPROJ-401'
projectName ...... : 'MYPROJ'
creator .......... : '...'
currentStatus .... : '10001'
title ............ : '...'
category ......... : '12'
lastModified ..... : '2011-05-20 09:33:44.127'
voteCount ........ : '0'

The problem is I need to get the child tasks associated with this ticket. I can see in the web interface that there are 3 child tasks (IDs 402, 403, etc). I can fetch these individually using fetchIssue(‘MYPROJ-402’) and they show up with the correct child task type.

But how do I discover these child task IDs through the XMLRPC API from the parent ticket?

I don’t see any parent reference in the child tasks or child references in the parent. Is this functionality missing from XMLRPC (requiring SOAP instead), or is there some workaround like a text search?

I’d prefer to stick with XMLRPC, but I need to know if it’s impossible so I don’t waste more time on it.

I’m using JIRA 3.13.5, and getServerInfo shows version ‘360’ from ‘Mon Jun 15 00:00:00 CEST 2009’.

2

yup, xmlrpc in jira 3.13.5 doesn’t expose issue links like soap. u might wanna upgrade jira or use a jql search like “parent = MYPROJ-401” if xmlrpc allows it. if that doesn’t work, switching to soap is likely ur best bet.

3

Been wrestling with JIRA XMLRPC for years and you’re hitting one of its biggest shortcomings. The parent-child relationship data just isn’t exposed through the standard fetchIssue call in that version. What worked for me was a two-step approach: first use getIssuesFromJqlSearch with a query like “project = MYPROJ AND key > MYPROJ-401 AND key < MYPROJ-500” to grab a batch of potentially related tickets, then filter them programmatically by checking issue types and creation dates. Not elegant but beats making individual API calls for every possible child ID. Performance hit’s manageable if you cache results and batch your searches intelligently. This saved me from migrating to SOAP when upgrading wasn’t an option.

4

Hit this same problem with old JIRA setups. The XMLRPC API in 3.13.5 just doesn’t handle parent-child relationships well - it’s a known limitation. I got around it using getIssuesFromTextSearch to hunt for the parent key in child task descriptions or summaries. Pretty hacky though, since you’re relying on consistent naming. You could also try getIssuesFromFilter if you can set up a saved filter in JIRA that grabs child tasks based on your project structure. Honestly, XMLRPC got deprecated for a reason. The SOAP API handles issue links way better, but I get not wanting that headache. If you can swing a JIRA upgrade, the REST APIs make this stuff trivial.