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I need a good example of using the LookbackAPI to get the data for a burn up chart. I see some limited questions and responses on the API but no examples on how I would use it to do so. I need to get the current scope on story points and story points completed.

Larry Maccherone
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user2002635
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2 Answers2

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Sorry for the scarcity of available examples. More and better examples will be coming as the LBAPI beta matures. I'd definitely recommend that you become familiar with the Lookback API (LBAPI) Documentation, as there are good examples there for formulating queries.

For a burnup, let's say you want to get the state Snapshots for an Iteration going from 15-Jan-2013 through 30-Jan-2013, and that the Iteration applies to a Project hierarchy that is four-deep. The following LBAPI query would obtain the PlanEstimate, ToDo, and Schedule State for Stories scheduled into that Iteration:

{
    find:
        {
           _TypeHierarchy:"HierarchicalRequirement",
           Children:null,
           _ValidFrom:{
              $gte:"2013-01-15TZ",
              $lt:"2013-01-30TZ"
           },
           Iteration:{
              $in:[
                 12345678910,
                 12345678911,
                 12345678912,
                 12345678913
              ]
           }
        },
        fields:[
           "PlanEstimate",
           "ToDo",
           "ScheduleState"
        ]
}

Where:

              $in:[
                 12345678910,
                 12345678911,
                 12345678912,
                 12345678913
              ]

Are the ObjectID's of the Iteration called "Iteration 1". It's probably easiest to get these Object ID's from a standard WSAPI query on Iterations: (Name = "Iteration 1"). For Iterations copied into a four-deep project hierarchy, we would see the four Iteration OID's similar to the above.

For charting, the toughest part right now is an easy way to deal with the Time-Series data. The most robust way to query and process LBAPI data currently is by working directly against the REST endpoint and processing the returned JSON results in your own code.

With Javascript apps, for processing the data and turning it into a Chart, the preferred toolkit is AppSDK2, specifically the SnapshotStore.

For Javascript apps, the Lumenize javascript library is separate from LBAPI, but was developed by Rally's director of analytics and is bundled in the SDK. You can find some examples of using LBAPI and Lumenize to produce charting as part of some Rally-internal and Rally-customer Hackathon projects here:

https://github.com/RallyHackathon

Please be cautious with these examples for a couple of reasons:

  • Several aspects of the Lumenize namespace will be changing/renamed for clarity
  • There's a bug in the current version of Lumenize where its timeSeriesCalculator does not correctly account for stories deleted or reparented.

Hopefully there will be an updated version of AppSDK2 bundled and released soon to consolidate the Lumenize namespace and resolve the bug, so that there's better glue between AppSDK2 and LBAPI for Javascript App development.

  • Thanks, that looks like it will be helpful. I am using .Net and am currently working with the .Net toolkit I downloaded from teh Rally webbsite. I am not sure how I would incorporate this in to what I am doing but will gibe it a shot in the morning. Do you know if anyone is successfully using this with .Net? – user2002635 Feb 11 '13 at 03:27
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Unfortunately, the .NET, Java and Python toolkits have not yet been updated to support the Lookback API. As a result, you'll have to do an HTTP POST to the Lookback API's REST endpoint directly, with a body similar to the one Mark W listed above and Content-Type 'application/json'.

I'd recommend using the Chrome extension 'XHR Poster' to experiment with what you're sending from a browser: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xhr-poster/akdbimilobjkfhgamdhneckaifceicen

Mark Smith
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