How to trigger a build in TFS 2015 using REST API

Question

I have TFS 2015 RC2 installed on-premise. I'm trying to use REST API to queue a build in a vNext definiton.

I'm using the code sample from VSO with slight modifications (mostly change of URL and authentication method to work with on-premise TFS).

There are two REST API calls I'm using.

The first is: GET http://mytfssrv:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/myproject/_apis/build/definitions/

Which returns all specified project build definitions: build definition with ID 1, which is a XAML build definition I'm not interested to queue in and build definition with ID 2, which is vNext build definition - that's where I I want to queue my build

Note that I omitted the ?api-version=1.0 part - that's because if I don't, I get only the XAML build definition.

The second call is to queue a new build in the vNext build definition:

POST http://mytfssrv:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection/myptoject/_apis/build/requests?api-version=1.0

with the following data:

{"definition":{"id":**2**},"reason":"Manual","priority":"Normal","queuePosition":0,"queueTime":"0001-01-01T00:00:00","requestedBy":null,"id":0,"status":null,"url":null,"builds":null}

The response I get from the server is:

TF215016: The build definition 2 does not exist. Specify a valid build definition and try again.

I tried changing the API version, changing the post data in various ways but never succeeded.

Any idea how to cure TFS from its DID?

Answer 1

This works like a charm without REST

var tfsurl = new Uri("http://localhost:8080/tfs/<***projectname***>/");    
var ttpc = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(tfsurl);
var bhc = ttpc.GetClient<BuildHttpClient>();
var builds = bhc.GetBuildsAsync("<***projectname***>").Result;
var build = builds
    .Where(x => x != null && x.Definition.Name.Equals("***buildDefinitionName***>"))
    .OrderByDescending(y => y.LastChangedDate)
    .FirstOrDefault();

bhc.QueueBuildAsync(build);