How can I efficiently list all work item type states via ADO REST API? - azure-devops-rest-api

Question

I am trying to list all work item type states for an organisation (visible to the authenticated user) via REST API. It seemed more efficient to list all processes (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/core/processes/list?view=azure-devops-rest-4.1) and then use the endpoint to list all work item types of those processes together with the states (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/processes/work-item-types/list?view=azure-devops-rest-4.1&tabs=HTTP). However, I am missing some custom states in the response.
When I list all projects (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/core/projects/list?view=azure-devops-rest-4.1&tabs=HTTP), then all work item types of those projects (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/wit/work-item-types/list?view=azure-devops-rest-4.1&tabs=HTTP) and then all states of those types (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/wit/work-item-type-states/list?view=azure-devops-rest-4.1&tabs=HTTP), there is everything. But that is sooo many requests.
Can someone explain, why is the first approach not working? Every projet should be associated with a process. Or not? Do you know a better way to get all those states as efficiently as possible?
Thanks in advance. :)

Answer 1

As we can see from the official documentation : Work Item Type States - List, it's in project level not the organization level. So, we need to get the states by project scope.
GET https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/wit/workitemtypes/{type}/states?api-version=4.1-preview.1
We can write a script to retrieve the projects and work item types in a loop, then get the states of each work item type.
UPDATE:
We can use States - List REST API to return a list of all state definitions in a work item type of the process.
Below PowerShell script for your reference to return the states from a specific process:
Param(
[string]$orgurl = "https://dev.azure.com/{org}",
[string]$processname = "Your-Process-Name",
[string]$user = "",
[string]$token = "PAT"
)
# Base64-encodes the Personal Access Token (PAT) appropriately
$base64AuthInfo = [Convert]::ToBase64String([Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(("{0}:{1}" -f $user,$token)))
#Get Process ID
$processesurl = "$orgurl/_apis/process/processes?api-version=6.0"
$processes = (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $processesurl -Method Get -Headers #{Authorization=("Basic {0}" -f $base64AuthInfo)}).value | where {$_.name -eq $processname }
$processesid = $processes.id
#List Work item types and witRefName
$witsurl = "$orgurl/_apis/work/processes/$processesid/workitemtypes?api-version=6.0"
$witRefNames = (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $witsurl -Method Get -Headers #{Authorization=("Basic {0}" -f $base64AuthInfo)}).value.referenceName #| where {$_.name -eq $processname }
#List WIT states
foreach ($witRefName in $witRefNames){
$statesurl = "$orgurl/_apis/work/processes/$processesid/workItemTypes/$witRefName/states?api-version=6.0"
$states = (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $statesurl -Method Get -Headers #{Authorization=("Basic {0}" -f $base64AuthInfo)}).value.name
Write-Host "==================================================================================="
Write-Host "$witRefName - States:" $states
Write-Host "==================================================================================="
echo `n
}
If you want to retrieve all states from all processes, then you can get the processes and loop them in the script.