In how many ways can you retrieve TeamCity artifacts? I say plenty to choose from! If you’re in a world of Java build tools then you can use plain HTTP request, Ant + Ivy, Gradle and Maven to download and use binaries produced by TeamCity build configurations. How? Read on.

Build Configuration “id”

Before you retrieve artifacts of any build configuration you need to know its "id" which can be seen in a browser when corresponding configuration is browsed. Let’s take IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition project hosted at teamcity.jetbrains.com as an example. Its “Community Dist” build configuration provides a number of artifacts which we’re going to play with. And as can be seen on the screenshot below, its "id" is "bt343".

HTTP

Anonymous HTTP access is probably the easiest way to fetch TeamCity artifacts, the URL to do so is:

http://server/guestAuth/repository/download/<btN>/<buildNumber>/<artifactName>

Fot this request to work 3 parameters need to be specified:

btN	Build configuration "id", as mentioned above.
buildNumber	Build number or one of predefined constants: "lastSuccessful", "lastPinned", or "lastFinished". For example, you can download periodic IDEA builds from last successful TeamCity execution.
artifactName	Name of artifact like "ideaIC-118.SNAPSHOT.win.zip". Can also take a form of "artifactName!archivePath" for reading archive’s content, like IDEA’s build file. You can get a list of all artifacts produced in a certain build by requesting a special "teamcity-ivy.xml" artifact generated by TeamCity.

Ant + Ivy

All artifacts published to TeamCity are accompanied by "teamcity-ivy.xml" Ivy descriptor, effectively making TeamCity an Ivy repository. The code below downloads "core/annotations.jar" from IDEA distribution to "download/ivy" directory:

"ivyconf.xml"

<ivysettings>
    <settings defaultResolver='teamcity-repo'/>
    <resolvers>
        <url name='teamcity-repo' alwaysCheckExactRevision='yes' checkmodified='true'>
            <ivy      pattern='http://teamcity.jetbrains.com/guestAuth/repository/download/[module]/[revision]/teamcity-ivy.xml'/>
            <artifact pattern='http://teamcity.jetbrains.com/guestAuth/repository/download/[module]/[revision]/[artifact](.[ext])'/>
        </url>
    </resolvers>
</ivysettings>

"ivy.xml"

<ivy-module version="1.3">
    <info organisation="com.jetbrains" module="idea"/>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency org="org" name="bt343" rev="lastSuccessful">
            <include name="core/annotations" ext="jar"/>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</ivy-module>

"build.xml"

<project name="teamcity-download" default="download" xmlns:ivy="antlib:org.apache.ivy.ant">
    <target name="download" xmlns:ivy="antlib:org.apache.ivy.ant">
        <taskdef uri="antlib:org.apache.ivy.ant" resource="org/apache/ivy/ant/antlib.xml"/>
        <ivy:configure file    = "${basedir}/ivyconf.xml"/>
        <ivy:resolve   file    = "${basedir}/ivy.xml"/>
        <ivy:retrieve  pattern = "${basedir}/download/ivy/[artifact].[ext]"/>
    </target>
</project>

Gradle

Identically to Ivy example above it is fairly easy to retrieve TeamCity artifacts with Gradle due to its built-in Ivy support. In addition to downloading the same jar file to "download/gradle" directory with a custom Gradle task let’s use it as "compile" dependency for our Java class, importing IDEA’s @NotNull annotation:

"Test.java"

import org.jetbrains.annotations.NotNull;
 
public class Test
{
    private final String data;
    public Test ( @NotNull String data ){ this.data = data; }
}

"build.gradle"

apply plugin: 'java'
 
repositories {
    ivy {
        ivyPattern      'http://teamcity.jetbrains.com/guestAuth/repository/download/[module]/[revision]/teamcity-ivy.xml'
        artifactPattern 'http://teamcity.jetbrains.com/guestAuth/repository/download/[module]/[revision]/[artifact](.[ext])'
    }
}
 
dependencies {
    compile ( 'org:bt343:lastSuccessful' ){
        artifact {
            name = 'core/annotations'
            type = 'jar'
        }
    }
}
 
task copyJar( type: Copy ) {
    from configurations.compile
    into "${ project.projectDir }/download/gradle"
}

Maven

The best way to use Maven with TeamCity is by setting up an Artifactory repository manager and its TeamCity plugin. This way artifacts produced by your builds are nicely deployed to Artifactory and can be served from there as from any other remote Maven repository.

However, you can still use TeamCity artifacts in Maven without any additional setups. "ivy-maven-plugin" bridges two worlds allowing you to plug Ivy resolvers into Maven’s runtime environment, download dependencies required and add them to corresponding "compile" or "test" scopes.

Let’s compile the same Java source from the Gradle example but using Maven this time.

"pom.xml"

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 
<project xmlns              = "http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi          = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation = "http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
 
http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
 
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.test</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven</artifactId>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <version>0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>[${project.groupId}:${project.artifactId}:${project.version}]</name>
    <description>Ivy Maven plugin example</description>
 
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.github.goldin</groupId>
                <artifactId>ivy-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>0.2.5</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>get-ivy-artifacts</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>ivy</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <phase>initialize</phase>
                        <configuration>
                            <ivyconf>${project.basedir}/ivyconf.xml</ivyconf>
                            <ivy>${project.basedir}/ivy.xml</ivy>
                            <dir>${project.basedir}/download/maven</dir>
                            <scope>compile</scope>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

When this plugin runs it resolves IDEA annotations artifact using the same "ivyconf.xml" and "ivy.xml" files we’ve seen previously, copies it to "download/maven" directory and adds to "compile" scope so our Java sources can compile.

GitHub Project

All examples demonstrated are available in my GitHub project. Feel free to clone and run it:

git clone git://github.com/evgeny-goldin/teamcity-download-examples.git
cd teamcity-download-examples
chmod +x run.sh dist/ant/bin/ant gradlew dist/maven/bin/mvn
./run.sh

Resources

The links below can provide you with more details:

• TeamCity – Patterns For Accessing Build Artifacts
• TeamCity – Accessing Server by HTTP
• TeamCity – Configuring Artifact Dependencies Using Ant Build Script
• Gradle – Ivy repositories
• "ivy-maven-plugin"

That’s it, you’ve seen it – TeamCity artifacts are perfectly accessible using either of 4 ways: direct HTTP access, Ant + Ivy, Gradle or Maven. Which one do you use? Let me know!