OSS Nexus: how to use REST API to retrieve last ve

Question

I'd like to retrieve the latest version name (as text) to be able to rename the artificats retrieved from Nexus which have timestamps.

What I do is create an archive of several archives containing in-house jar projects, dependencies, related scripts, ... But if the packaged jars are snapshots, the archives end up with timestamps when downloaded. Those timestamps replace the X.X.X-SNAPSHOT extension of the archive and I cannot make any automated script to perform some tasks like extracting the archive, renaming the directory, make some symbolic links, ...

I did not find anything related to this in the rest api documentation. Is there a simple way to do this with the rest api or some kind of scripting?

Thanks.

Edit:

From the below answer I managed to retrieve the latest snapshot version using LATEST instead of the version name:

Then using a script I can retrieve the base version.

#!/bin/bash
VERSION=`curl --silent "http://redmine.saic.int:8081/nexus/service/local/artifact/maven/resolve?r=snapshots&g=com.g2mobility&a=G2-Modem-Mgr&v=LATEST&c=executable&e=tar.gz" | sed -n 's|<baseVersion>\(.*\)</baseVersion>|\1|p'`

VERSION=`echo "$VERSION" | tr -d ' '`

echo "Version is $VERSION"

Thanks!

Answer 1

The documentation for the Maven Resolve Nexus REST API can be found here: https://maven.java.net/nexus-core-documentation-plugin/core/docs/rest.artifact.maven.resolve.html

Answer 2

This was an eariler deleted posting proposing an alternative way of assembling distributions from Maven repository content:

Ivy is an alternative dependency management client, which can be run from the command-line as follows:

java -jar ivy.jar -settings ivysettings.xml -dependency org.cometd.jetty cometd-jetty-client 1.0-SNAPSHOT -retrieve "distrib/[artifact]-[revision](-[classifier]).[ext]"

The retrieve option of the ivy command details how the downloaded files should be stored locally:

-- distrib
   |-- cometd-api-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
   |-- cometd-jetty-client-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
   |-- cometd-jetty-client-1.0-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar
   |-- cometd-jetty-client-1.0-SNAPSHOT-sources.jar
   |-- cometd-jetty-server-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
   |-- jetty-6.1.15.jar
   |-- jetty-client-6.1.15.jar
   |-- jetty-sslengine-6.1.15.jar
   |-- jetty-util5-6.1.15.jar
   |-- jetty-util-6.1.15.jar
   `-- servlet-api-2.5-20081211.jar

The correct timestamped artifact is retrieved but the "SNAPSHOT" revision number is preserved, which is what I understand you're trying to do.

The ivysettings file details the repositories to be used when downloading artifacts:

<ivysettings>
    <settings defaultResolver="repos"/>
    <resolvers>
        <chain name="repos">
            <ibiblio name="central" m2compatible="true"/>
            <ibiblio name="cometd-snapshot" root="https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/cometd-snapshots/" m2compatible="true"/>
        </chain>
    </resolvers>
</ivysettings>

Answer 3

Nexus has the following REST API for describing how Maven modules are resolved:

• Artifact Maven Resolve

Example

To obtain the details about the following artifact:

<groupId>org.cometd.jetty</groupId>
<artifactId>cometd-jetty-client</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

Use the following REST API:

https://oss.sonatype.org/service/local/artifact/maven/resolve?r=cometd-snapshots&g=org.cometd.jetty&a=cometd-jetty-client&v=1.0-SNAPSHOT&e=jar

Returns the following report:

<artifact-resolution>
  <data>
    <presentLocally>true</presentLocally>
    <groupId>org.cometd.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>cometd-jetty-client</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-20090313.100344-2</version>
    <baseVersion>1.0-SNAPSHOT</baseVersion>
    <extension>jar</extension>
    <snapshot>true</snapshot>
    <snapshotBuildNumber>2</snapshotBuildNumber>
    <snapshotTimeStamp>1236938624000</snapshotTimeStamp>
    <sha1>0cbf7163f19bf4586e27632a1f742dd0c0e0036d</sha1>
    <repositoryPath>/org/cometd/jetty/cometd-jetty-client/1.0-SNAPSHOT/cometd-jetty-client-1.0-20090313.100344-2.jar</repositoryPath>
  </data>
</artifact-resolution>