Create git branch from Jira issue summary

By chimo on (updated on )

We use Jira to track issues/tasks at work. I got tired of switching to the browser to refer to (or copy, paste and edit) the Jira issue summary to give my git branches meaningful names.

I wrote a quick script that:

  1. Takes a Jira issue key as an input
    (ex: TARDIS-1234).
  2. Gets my Jira credentials from my password manager
    (rbw).
  3. Calls the Jira API to retrieve the Jira issue “Summary”
    (ex: “Implement Time-Traveling”).
  4. Turns the summary into a slug
    (thanks, github.com/Mayeu/slugify)
  5. Creates and switches to a new branch
    (ex: `git checkout -b tardis-1234-implement-time-traveling`).
~/.local/bin/jira-branch.sh 
#!/bin/sh -eu

# https://github.com/Mayeu/slugify/blob/master/slugify#L24
to_slug() {
  # Forcing the POSIX local so alnum is only 0-9A-Za-z
  export LANG=POSIX
  export LC_ALL=POSIX
  # Keep only alphanumeric value
  sed -e 's/[^[:alnum:]]/-/g' |
  # Keep only one dash if there is multiple one consecutively
  tr -s '-'                   |
  # Lowercase everything
  tr A-Z a-z                  |
  # Remove last dash if there is nothing after
  sed -e 's/-$//'
}

issue_key="${1}"
issue_key=$(echo "${issue_key}" | tr A-Z a-z)

username=$(rbw get -f username jira)
password=$(rbw get -f password jira)

jira_api_root="https://example.org/rest/api/2"

issue_summary=$(
    curl -s -u "${username}:${password}" --request GET \
    --url "${jira_api_root}/issue/${issue_key}?fields=summary" \
    --header "Accept: application/json" \
    | jq .fields.summary -r | to_slug
)

git checkout -b "${issue_key}-${issue_summary}"

I might call this from a git-alias in the future. Right now it’s just a script in my $PATH.