How to submit bugs to BugTracker.NET from C# application?

Question

Reading the documentation page of BugTracker.NET
BugTracker.NET API Documentation I realized that I need to use GET or POST which, I have to admit, I'm not very good at. I was wondering:

• Is there a library that could be used to easily submit bugs to BugTracker.NET from a C# application (or VB.NET) ?
  Or,
  
• If there's no library. How can use GET or POST to submit bugs to BugTracker.NET ?

Answer 1

Thank you all for your answers. Using your answers and other resources on the web, I've put together a method for submitting a new bug to BugTracker.NET
The method returns a boolean value indicating success or failure and it displays a message to the user with the status.
This behavior could be changed to match your needs. The method uses POST method to submit bugs which helps to submit any long text in the comment (I've tried to submit the content of a log file in the comments and it worked).

Here's the code:

public bool SubmitBugToBugTracker(string serverName,
                                        bool useProxy,
                                        string proxyHost,
                                        int proxyPort,
                                        string userName,
                                        string password,
                                        string description,
                                        string comment,
                                        int projectId)
    {
        if (!serverName.EndsWith(@"/"))
        {
            serverName += @"/";
        }
        string requestUrl = serverName + "insert_bug.aspx";
        string requestMethod = "POST";
        string requestContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
        string requestParameters = "username=" + userName
                                  + "&password=" + password
                                  + "&short_desc=" + description
                                  + "&comment=" + comment
                                  + "&projectid=" + projectId;
        // POST parameters (postvars)
        byte[] buffer = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(requestParameters);
        // Initialisation
        HttpWebRequest WebReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(requestUrl);
        // Add proxy info if used.
        if (useProxy)
        {
            WebReq.Proxy = new WebProxy(proxyHost, proxyPort);
        }

        // Method is POST
        WebReq.Method = requestMethod;
        // ContentType, for the postvars.
        WebReq.ContentType = requestContentType;
        // Length of the buffer (postvars) is used as contentlength.
        WebReq.ContentLength = buffer.Length;
        // Open a stream for writing the postvars
        Stream PostData = WebReq.GetRequestStream();
        //Now we write, and afterwards, we close. Closing is always important!
        PostData.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
        PostData.Close();
        // Get the response handle, we have no true response yet!
        HttpWebResponse WebResp = (HttpWebResponse)WebReq.GetResponse();
        // Read the response (the string)
        Stream Answer = WebResp.GetResponseStream();
        StreamReader _Answer = new StreamReader(Answer);
        string responseStream = _Answer.ReadToEnd();

        // Find out if bug submission was successfull.
        if (responseStream.StartsWith("OK:"))
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Bug submitted successfully.");
            return true;
        }
        else if (responseStream.StartsWith("ERROR:"))
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Error occured. Bug hasn't been submitted.\nError Message: " + responseStream);
            return false;
        }
        else
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Error occured. Bug hasn't been submitted.\nError Message: " + responseStream);
            return false;
        }
    }

Answer 2

Check this simple example from the documentation of how to make a POST request using .Net. Just make sure to set up the variables being POSTed in according to BugTracker.NET API requirements.

Answer 3

Below is the code from BugTracker.NET's service which reads emails from a pop3 server and then submits them as bugs to the insert_bug.aspx page. But it doesn't have to be this complicated.

Just invoking this URL will also work:

http:\\YOUR-HOST\insert_bug.aspx?username=YOU&password=YOUR-PASSWORD&short_desc=This+is+a+bug

The more complicated code:

            string post_data = "username=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ServiceUsername)
                + "&password=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ServicePassword)
                + "&projectid=" + Convert.ToString(projectid)
                + "&from=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(from)
                + "&short_desc=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(subject)
                + "&message=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(message);

            byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(post_data);


            // send request to web server
            HttpWebResponse res = null;
            try
            {
                HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest) System.Net.WebRequest.Create(Url);


                req.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
                req.PreAuthenticate = true; 

                //req.Timeout = 200; // maybe?
                //req.KeepAlive = false; // maybe?

                req.Method = "POST";
                req.ContentType= "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
                req.ContentLength=bytes.Length;
                Stream request_stream = req.GetRequestStream();
                request_stream.Write(bytes,0,bytes.Length);
                request_stream.Close();
                res = (HttpWebResponse) req.GetResponse();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                write_line("HttpWebRequest error url=" + Url);
                write_line(e);
            }

            // examine response

            if (res != null) {

                int http_status = (int) res.StatusCode;
                write_line (Convert.ToString(http_status));

                string http_response_header = res.Headers["BTNET"];
                res.Close();

                if (http_response_header != null)
                {
                    write_line (http_response_header);

                    // only delete message from pop3 server if we
                    // know we stored in on the web server ok
                    if (MessageInputFile == ""
                    && http_status == 200
                    && DeleteMessagesOnServer == "1"
                    && http_response_header.IndexOf("OK") == 0)
                    {
                        write_line ("sending POP3 command DELE");
                        write_line (client.DELE (message_number));
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    write_line("BTNET HTTP header not found.  Skipping the delete of the email from the server.");
                    write_line("Incrementing total error count");
                    total_error_count++;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                write_line("No response from web server.  Skipping the delete of the email from the server.");
                write_line("Incrementing total error count");
                total_error_count++;
            }

Answer 4

I was using that method but did not like sending the password along with the submitted bug. For various reasons, we are using the internal BugTracker password system and not LDAP authentication, so their BugTracker passwords are not known to us. In my case, all of our users are authorized to submit bugs, and their login is their LAN ID. So, from their authenticated instance of the application, I collect their reported issue, capture the project ID, program and class where they are reporting the issue, and call a stored procedure in the BugTracker DB to directly insert the item.

The negative of course is that this is directly into the database and potentially could cause issues with future upgrades, but it is working well for us now.

(SQL2005/2008)

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Add_Bug]
@strUsername as varchar(20) = '', 
@intProjID as integer = 0,
@strSubject as varchar(200),
@strComment as text
AS
    BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;

declare @us_id as integer
declare @us_org as integer
declare @st_id as integer
declare @priority as integer
declare @category as integer
declare @errorreturn as integer
declare @assigneduser as integer

declare @newbugid as integer

if (@intProjID = 0 or RTRIM(@strUsername) = '') 
    RETURN -1

set @priority = 3 -- default to LOW
set @category = 1 -- default to bug

-- look up us_id, us_org from users where us_username = 'lanid'

set @us_id = 0

BEGIN TRY

    BEGIN TRANSACTION

    select @us_id = us_id, @us_org = us_org from BugTracker.dbo.users 
    where us_username = @strUsername

    if (@@ROWCOUNT = 0 or @us_id = 0 )
    BEGIN
        -- set to default values to allow entry anyway
        -- if not found default to the autobug reporter
                    -- this is a separate account created just for these reports
        set @us_id = 36     
        set @us_org = 6     
    END

    select @assigneduser = pj_default_user from projects 
                    where pj_id = @intProjID and 
        pj_auto_assign_default_user = 1

    if (@@ROWCOUNT <> 1)
        set @assigneduser = NULL

    -- get default status as st_id from statuses where st_default = 1

    select @st_id = st_id from BugTracker.dbo.statuses where st_default = 1 

    -- now insert the bug and post comments

    insert into bugs (bg_short_desc, bg_reported_user, bg_reported_date,
            bg_status, bg_priority, bg_org, bg_category, bg_project,                     
            bg_assigned_to_user, bg_last_updated_user, bg_last_updated_date) 
    values ( @strSubject, @us_id, getdate(), @st_id, @priority, @us_org,
            @category, @intProjID, @assigneduser, @us_id, getdate())

    if @@ERROR <> 0
        BEGIN
        ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
        END
    ELSE
        BEGIN

        select @newbugid = @@IDENTITY

        insert into bug_posts (bp_bug, bp_type, bp_user, bp_date,
                    bp_comment, bp_hidden_from_external_users)
        values (@newbugid, 'comment', @us_id, getdate(), @strComment, 0)

        if @@ERROR <> 0
            ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
        END
END TRY

BEGIN CATCH
    ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
    RETURN -2
END CATCH   

IF (@@TRANCOUNT > 0)
    COMMIT TRANSACTION

RETURN @newbugid

END