How to query history in TFS?

Question

I know every TFS work item shows it's history, but it's "find the difference" painful process... How can I query by history to see WHAT was actually changed? Assume I don't know what was changed, or that multiple items were changed, so I can't use an actual word or phrase

Answer 1

Are you using Visual Studio Online (VSO)? If so, you can use the REST API and specifically the Updates method to see what changed in each revision of a work item. This will let you easily see the difference between two consecutive revisions.

If you want the changes between, say, revision 3 and revision 8 then you will need to aggregate the individual revision changes yourself to see the net difference between those two revisions.

If you're using an on-premise TFS server then you'll be using the .NET API. For that, have a look at this CodeProject article for more information, but the basics are that you need to do something like this to see all the revision information:

var tfs = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(
                    new Uri("https://tfs2010:8080/defaultcollection"));
var service = tfs.GetService<WorkItemStore>();
var workItem = service.GetWorkItem(id);
foreach (Revision revision in workItem.Revisions)
{
  foreach (Field field in wi.Fields)
  {
    //Do something interesting here instead
    var change = revision.Fields[field.Name].Value
  }
}

From there, it's up to you to work out what information you're actually interested in.

Answer 2

have a look at the: work item history visualizer

also, there's get-tfsitemhistory