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Bitbucket Server: How to obtain real commit hashes from an effective diff hash?

Synthead

When querying the API for commit comments, I sometimes get anchors that have a diffType of "EFFECTIVE" with a toHash that appears to be generated somehow. Is there a way that I can use this data to get a list of commits used for this "effective" diff?

Here's an example from the "activities" endpoint:

{"fromHash"=>"87fabe1ef09821868e789b5bde5b5cfb20c901fa",
"toHash"=>"da2f8b463cd5b28854958dea27f8f5e71884f445",
"line"=>7,
"lineType"=>"ADDED",
"fileType"=>"TO",
"path"=>"Rakefile",
"diffType"=>"EFFECTIVE",
"orphaned"=>true}

Accepted answers

All comments

Juan Palacios

Hi @Synthead

Thanks for reaching out. I'm not 100% of what information you are after. If you are looking for a list commits in the pull request, then the pull request commits endpoint (or the PullRequestService.getCommits endpoint in Java) could give you what you are after.

The EFFECTIVE diff type is the diff that pull requests display by default. To produce this diff, the fromHash is the HEAD of the PullRequest.getToRef. The toHash is calculated by merging the PullRequest.getFromRef and PullRequest.getToRef. In essence the effective diff shows users "how the target branch will change if the PR was merged as is". You can find more information about the diff in this post.

Hope this is the information you were looking for.

Regards

Juan Palacios

Tyler Mann

This EFFECTIVE diff type does seem to make it very difficult to use the API and tell what commit a comment is on since there doesn't seem to be a way for the caller to relate an effective hash to an existing hash in the repo (or a hash returned by the commits API). Even if the toHash is calculated by merging the fromRef into the toRef, it is a constantly changing value and even if I do merge a pull request through bitbucket UI this hash will change since the commit timestamp will change.

Is there any way through the API to convert an effective toHash to its corresponding commit toHash, or list all commits with their effective hashes? Or alternatively is there any way to list all comments with their anchors expressed as real commit hashes instead of effective hashes?

Juan Palacios

Hi @Tyler Mann,

Thanks for your feedback. Allow me to break down your comment to more clearly address your concerns.

This EFFECTIVE diff type does seem to make it very difficult to use the API and tell what commit a comment is on since there doesn't seem to be a way for the caller to relate an effective hash to an existing hash in the repo (or a hash returned by the commits API)

Comments are not anchored at a commit. They are anchored at a diff. The hashes in the anchor tell us which diff the path and line refer to.

Even if the toHash is calculated by merging the fromRef into the toRef, it is a constantly changing value and even if I do merge a pull request through bitbucket UI this hash will change since the commit timestamp will change.

That is correct. However comment threads anchored at an effective diff are processed on every update to the source or the target branch to update their anchor to the new diff. We call this comment drifting. Whenever a comment thread can't be drifted (e.g.: an update has removed the anchor file/line from the diff) it is marked as outdated, it no longer shows up on the diff, but can be seen in the activity stream.

Is there any way through the API to convert an effective toHash to its corresponding commit toHash, or list all commits with their effective hashes? Or alternatively is there any way to list all comments with their anchors expressed as real commit hashes instead of effective hashes?

There are three types of anchors available in the system.

EFFECTIVE: These anchors reference the effective diff described in my previous comment. The fromHash is the HEAD of the target branch and the toHash is the calculated merge commit hash. Whenever the pull request is rescoped (i.e.: the source or the target branch are updated) these anchors are processed so that we can update them to reference the new hashes (drifting their path and line if necessary). At any given time when retrieving these anchors you can be sure that the commits used to produce the merge hash are the HEADs of the pull request's source and target branch.
COMMIT: These anchors reference the diff between a commit and its first parent. They are used when looking at the diff for a commit either in the Commit page or when selecting a commit in the pull request diff drop down menu. These anchors are never drifted.
ITERATIVE: These anchors reference a diff for a commit range. The fromHash is an ancestor of the toHash. They are used in iterative review diffs. These diffs are produced when a reviewer comes back to a pull request they've marked as "Needs work" in the past after changes have been added to it. In this case we display for the reviewer a diff which shows them "what's new" by calculating a diff from the old HEAD of the source branch to the new one. These anchors are never drifted.

Hope this helps clarify how our Comment API works.

Regards

Juan Palacios

Tyler Mann

Hi Juan,

Thanks so much for the detailed explanation and quick response, this definitely makes sense to me and helps clarify how your API works. Unfortunately I still have the same issues though which is basically needing to know what line a comment is on on a known commit hash/path (this is how bitbucket cloud works as well, it gives you a real commit hash to reference the comment's location). However I think I have a hacky workaround for now which at leasts let me convert the EFFECTIVE comments to the hash of the tip of the branch.

My workaround is to call something like the <pullRequest>/changes API to get the current toHash which seems to be the same used for EFFECTIVE comments that are still visible. Then call the API to get the pull request details and take the FromRef.LatestCommit. Then call the /changes API one more time to make sure that the toHash hasn't changed. If it hasn't then EFFECTIVE comments that have this hash seen from the /changes API can be mapped to the real sha retrieved from the pull request FromRef.LatestCommit.

I am basically looking to see if there is any easier to way to get this mapping or an existing commit and path/line of a comment. Since although the comments are on the diff as you mentioned, you likely also have this kind of mapping internally in order to do the drifting you mention.

Thanks so much for your help and quick response!

Tyler

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