Accessing TFS (on prem) via powershell in docker windows container - windows

Question

I have a window 2016 server running windowservercore. I am working on moving CI pipeline into containers. During our process, we build a version.html file. The file contains build data(like build date and build nbr) and TFS 2017 project information about merge/branch that have occured.
We had this working with TeamCity running a PowerShell script that would connect and run a query against TFS 2017. So I looked on docker hub for TFS, but did not have any luck. I also tried looking under Microsoft on docker hub and did not find anything.
I tried to create a new docker file
FROM microsoft/windowsservercore:10.0.14393.1480
# Setup shell
SHELL ["powershell", "-Command", "$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'; $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue';"]
RUN Mkdir BuildStage
COPY powershell/CopyBuildToStageDir.ps1 \BuildStage
Copy powershell/BuildVersionFile.ps1 \BuildStage
RUN dir
But when I ran the Powershell file inside the windows container it said...
Unable to find type
[09:25:00][Step 2/2] [Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.TeamFoundationServerFactory].
[09:25:00][Step 2/2] At C:\BuildStage\BuildVersionFile.ps1:192 char:12
In the PowerShell, there is this function
#============================================================================
# Setup TFS stuff
#============================================================================
function Setup-Tfs {
# Connect to TFS
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client") | out-null
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client") | out-null
$tfsServer = "http://ourServer";
$tfs = [Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.TeamFoundationServerFactory]::GetServer($tfsServer)
$Script:versionControlServer = $tfs.GetService([Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.VersionControlServer] )
$Script:recursionType = [Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.RecursionType]::Full
}
Here are more details of how we are using powershell to call TFS to get Merge and Branch information to build the version.html file...
# Need to get the last 5 changesets of Merge information for both MAIN and Iteration
Setup-Tfs
$baseLocation = "$/OurBaseLocation/"
$locationForMain = $baseLocation + $OurProjectLocation
# Query history for the TFS path
$vCSChangeSets = $versionControlServer.QueryHistory($locationForMain, $recursionType, 5)
# History of Merge changes to MAIN application (only 5 deep)
"<table border='2'>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
"<caption>Merge Info For: $AppName </caption>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
# Build out headers
"<TH>Changeset</TH><TH>Date</TH><TH>Comment</TH>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
Foreach ($vCSChangeSet in $vCSChangeSets) {
# write row
$changeset = $vCSChangeSet.ChangesetID
$CheckinNotesName = $vCSChangeSet.Comment
$CreationDate = $vCSChangeSet.CreationDate
if ($CheckinNotesName.ToUpper().Contains("MERGE")){
"<TR>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
"<TD>$changeset</TD><TD>$CreationDate</TD><TD>$CheckinNotesName</TD>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
"</TR>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
}
if ($CheckinNotesName.ToUpper().Contains("BRANCH")){
"<TR>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
"<TD>$changeset</TD><TD>$CreationDate</TD><TD>$CheckinNotesName</TD>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
"</TR>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
}
}
# close table add space
"</table><BR/><BR/>" | Out-File $VersionFname -append
My guess is that my docker file needs to add something for "Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client"
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

What I found that worked best was to give up on the PowerShell namespaces for TFS. Instead, use the TFS API. Here is an example to get the properties of a single WI.
#============================================
# Get-TFSFieldsByWiId
#============================================
function Get-TFSFieldsByWiId([string]$Id) {
$url = 'http://YourTFSUrl:YourPort/YourProject/_apis/wit/workitems?ids=' + $Id+'&$expand=all&api-version=YourVersion'
# Step 1. Create a username:password pair
$credPair = "$(''):$($password)"
# Step 2. Encode the pair to Base64 string
$encodedCredentials = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($credPair))
# Step 3. Form the header and add the Authorization attribute to it
$headers = #{ Authorization = "Basic $encodedCredentials" }
# Step 4. Make the GET request
$responseData = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -Method Get -Headers $headers -UseBasicParsing -Body ($QueryToRun|ConvertTo-Json) -ContentType "application/json"
$data = $responseData.Content
$data = $data | ConvertFrom-Json
$WIDetails = $data.value
return $WIDetails
}