How to programmatically get information about branches in TFS?

Question

I need to programmatically find out information about branches in TFS. For instance the main thing i am interested is given root folder $/MyProject/Project1 I neeed to find out what other folders have been branched from it. I am just after the right API methods.

Say i have connection to TFS server and have access to VersionControlServer and Workspace class instances.

Answer 1

Ok, this was both easier and more difficult than I thought it would be. I was able to pull this together from a few different sources, but this seems to work. I will warn you, there's no error handling here, and if the itemSpec doesn't exist, it bombs with an exception.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;
using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client;

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    TfsTeamProjectCollection tfs = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(
                                            new Uri("http://tfs:8080"));    
    string srcFolder = "$/ProjectName";    
    var versionControl = tfs.GetService<VersionControlServer>();    
    ItemSpec[] specs = new ItemSpec[]{new ItemSpec(srcFolder, RecursionType.None)};

    System.Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Source folder {0} was branched to:",
                                           srcFolder));    
    BranchHistoryTreeItem[][] branchHistory =
        versionControl.GetBranchHistory(specs, VersionSpec.Latest);

    foreach (BranchHistoryTreeItem item in branchHistory[0][0].Children)
    {
        ShowChildren(item);
    } 

    System.Console.WriteLine();
    System.Console.WriteLine("Hit Enter to continue");
    System.Console.ReadLine();    
}

static void ShowChildren(BranchHistoryTreeItem parent)
{
    foreach (BranchHistoryTreeItem item in parent.Children)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(
            string.Format("Branched to {0}", 
                          item.Relative.BranchToItem.ServerItem));
        if (item.Children.Count > 0)
        {
            foreach(BranchHistoryTreeItem child in item.Children)
            {
                ShowChildren(child);
            }                       
        }
    }
}