How to export a list of Jira custom fields to csv (Jira Data Center)

 Hello All !

As a Jira administrator it is very important to keep an eye on the number of custom fields you have in your instance because the number of custom fields directly impact your instance performance. Atlassian also has confirmed this in their documentation. 

One of the important strategies to keep your custom field number low is to reuse them as much as possible across projects. When you get a request from a user to create a custom project, you can provide a list of custom fields upfront, and ask the user to choose existing fields instead of creating new ones. Out of the box, Jira doesn't provide an easy way to export the custom field list to a csv file to share with non Jira admin users.

In this blog I will share how I exported all Jira custom fields into a csv file using Jira REST API and Python.

This solution was tested on Jira Data Center version 8.x, Python3 and Windows 11. Let's see how we can get the custom field list in 3 easy steps.

Note: I assume that you have Python setup in your environment where you will run the script in Step 3 and you know how to run a python script. Also, you need to have Jira administrator access to your instance.

Step 1: Login to your Jira instance as a Jira Administrator and go to this url https://your.instance.domain/rest/api/2/customfields?startAt=1&maxResults=2000. This url will return a JSON response to the screen with custom fields in your instance. Change the maxResults parameter based on the number of fields in your instance.

Step 2: Copy the entire JSON response returned on your screen and save this to a text file named "fields.txt".

Step 3 : Copy the below code and save this into a ".py" file (ex: export_fields.py). Then place the file created in Step 2 (fields.txt) in the same folder as the ".py" file. Finally run the python script.

import csv, json
from datetime import date

input_file = open ('fields.txt')
json_object = json.load(input_file)
json_array = json_object['values']
field_list = []

for item in json_array:
    field_details = {"Id":None, "Name":None, "Type":None}
    field_details['Id'] = item['id']
    field_details['Name'] = item['name']
    field_details['Type'] = item['type']
    field_list.append(field_details)


print(len(field_list))

current_date = date.today().strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
extention = '.csv'
csv_file_name = "Jira Custom Field List  " + current_date

csv_columns = ['Id','Name','Type']  
csv_file = csv_file_name + extention
try:
    with open(csv_file, 'w', newline ='') as csvfile:
        writer = csv.DictWriter(csvfile, fieldnames=csv_columns)
        writer.writeheader()
        for data in field_list:
            writer.writerow(data)
except IOError:
    print("I/O error")                                                                                                                                     

Step 3 will generate a CSV file in the same folder with all custom fields in your system including field name, field type and field id. You can then share this with your internal users who will be requesting new fields.

Thanks for taking your time to read this post. Hope this will help you !