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What are Jira expressions?

Where are Jira expressions used in JWT for Jira Cloud?

JWT Jira expressions can be used in every context. The Jira expression mode is available in all post functions provided by Jira Workflow Toolbox for Jira Cloud supports the usage of Jira expressions within its Jira as well as in the Jira expression condition and Jira expression validator. 

In order to illustrate with a simple example, the following Jira expression would ensure that an issue is currently assigned to a Jira user.

issue.assignee != null

What is the difference to

JWT expressions?

While they might look quite same, it is important to know that Jira expressions and the JWT for Jira Cloud parser expressions have  have nothing in common in the background.

The parser expression equivalent The equivalent to our former example, using JWT expression field codes would read:

%{issue.assignee} != null

Apparently, one of the main differences to Jira expressions is the way fields are referenced: in parser expressions, field values can be referenced by a slightly different set of field codes that are always led by a percentage sign, written between curly brackets, e.g. %{issue.description}the field codes are referenced.

Another major difference is that you can write your own functions (so-called Arrow functions) in Jira expressions and use complex objects.

Image Added Example expressions

issue.issueType.name == "Story"

issue.subtasks.map(s =>  s.key)

issue.subtasks.reduce((result, issue) => 
            result.set(
                issue.status.name, 
                (result[issue.status.name] || 0) + 1), 
            new Map())

issue.priority.name == "Medium"

issue.issueType.name.match('^(Bug|Task)$') != null

issue.labels.includes("Support")

issue.description.plainText.length >= 100

issue.comments.length >= 5

new Date().getDay() != 1

issue.subtasks[0].key

issue.subtasks.length

issue.subtasks.map(s => s.status.name)

issue.comments.some(com => com.body.plainText.match('([A-Z][A-Z0-9]+)-\d+') != null)

issue.subtasks.some(sub => sub.components.some(comp => (comp.name == "QA")))

issue.subtasks
.every(sub => sub.comments
.some(com => com.body.plainText.match('([A-Z][A-Z0-9]+)-\d+') != null))

issue.comments
.map(c => c.body.plainText)
.filter(text => text.length > 99)
.length > 0

issue.links
.filter(link => link.type.name == "Blocks"  )
.length == 0

issue.links
.filter(link => link.linkedIssue.status.name == "Done")
.length == issue.links.length

issue.links
.filter(link => link.linkedIssue.issueType.name == "Bug")
.every(link => link.linkedIssue.resolution != null)

Why do I need both?

Right now, Jira expressions are the only officially supported way to formulate custom conditions or validators in Jira Cloud.

Being the "brain" of Jira Workflow Toolbox for Server and Data Center, its JWT expression editor and the underlying expression parser has  have evolved from a small set of handy functions to a comprehensive list and a fundamental part of this app over the years.

Therefore it was only obvious to make this core functionality available for Jira Cloud as well.

As in the Server and Data Center version, it is widely usedJWT for Jira Cloud thus provides two different, powerful means to work with Jira content. In many cases, the functionality is overlapping, e.g. to compose texts using when it comes to certain field codes or to extend post functions by conditional executions using logical expressions.and functions. Furthermore they complement each other: For instance, the JWT expression parser provides a function for getting issues from a JQL query (issuesFromJQL), which is not provided out of the box by Jira expressions. On the other hand, with Jira expressions you are able to define own functions, which requires basic scripting knowledge, and work with more complex data types. 

Choose the appropriate parsing mode depending on your needs and programming skills!

Where do I start?

To ensure that Familiarize yourself with the Jira expression mode. Once you have a quick and easy entry into the world of Jira expressions, we have prepared a comprehensive list of use cases and Jira expression examplesgeneral overview make sure to check out the various use cases  we have prepared for you.

To deep-dive into Jira expressions we suggest reading up on the additional information we have prepared for you:children

• Field codes
  
• Data types (Jira expressions)
• Operators (Jira expressions)

What else should I know?

Jira expressions follow certain constraints with regard to the evaluation of those expressions (see the official documentation).

While the limits should be high enough not to interfere with any intended usage, it's important to realize that they do exist:

• The Expression length is limited to 1,000 characters or 100 syntactic elements.
• Expressions don't do not support logging or custom error messages. Any non-boolean value will be considered as false false.

• Expression Expressions can execute a maximum of 10 so-called "expensive" operations, i.e. those that load additional data, such as entity properties, comments, or custom fields, e.g.
  Given an expression to check whether every sub-task has at least one comment containing an issue key, will fail if this issue has more than 10 sub-tasks.

issue.subtasks.every(sub => sub.comments.some(com => com.body.plainText.match('([A-Z][A-Z0-9]+)-\d+') != null))

Image Modified

Need additional resources?

The best way would be to start with the official documentation:

• Official documentation for Jira expressions: https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/platform/jira-expressions
• Official documentation for Jira expression types: https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/platform/jira-expressions-type-reference