Using PowerShell’s Invoke-RestMethod to Access VSTS OData

How-to Access VSTS OData

Given that Microsoft has abandoned their TFS CmdLets, one alternative is to access VSTS data is through the OData interface using the Invoke-RestMethod.

Before you begin you need to set up Alternate authentication credentials by navigating to https://.visualstudio.com/_details/security/altcreds.  Once these are established, you will likely want to save them to a local PowerShell variable so that they can be reused for each Invoke-RestMethod invocation.

$vstsCredentials = Get-Credential

IMPORTANT: When entering your credentials, be sure to prefix it with your tenant name.  For example, if your VSTS URL is .visualstudio.com and your alternate credential username is "InigoMontoya", you will want to enter a username of \InigoMontoya.

Next, you want to invoke the appropriate TFS OData resource URL corresponding to the type of data you want to access (Projects, WorkItems, Builds, etc).  For example, to access the projects associated with your tenant you would use:

$projectsData = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'https://tfsodata.visualstudio.com/DefaultCollection/Projects?$format=json' -Credential $vstsCredentials

To view the results you would dereference the result as follows:

$projectsData.d.results | Select-Object Name,Collection

The result will be a list of projects and their corresponding collection URL (which are likely all the same on VSTS).