#NoStupidQuestion: How to find Jira custom_field IDs using curl?

Use Case:

When we’re building forms that connect to a Jira project or board, we’ll often need to send data to Jira through its API. But Jira uses internal field IDs (like customfield_10057) — not the nice field names we see in the UI.

So before we can push our form data to Jira, we need to know:

• For example: “What’s the custom field ID for ‘Summary’, ‘Reporter’, or ‘Description’?”

Because once we know the custom field IDs, we can create a form that automatically pushes the data to Jira via the API.

Here’s how to find them the easy way!

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Get a Jira API Token

Before we can talk to Jira using code or the command line, we need to authenticate.

Jira Cloud uses an API token instead of a password.

we can generate one like this:

Go to:https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens

1. Click “Create API token”

2. Give it a name (e.g. "automation-form")

3. Click Create, and copy the token (we won’t see it again!)

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Test Our Credentials

Let’s test that our email + API token works by asking Jira who we are:

curl -u your_email@example.com:your_api_token \
  -X GET "https://yourcompany.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/myself"

If it works, we’ll get a JSON response showing our Jira account.

If not, double-check:

• Your email is the one tied to your Atlassian account

• Your API token is correct

• There are no spaces in the token or wrong quote marks

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Fetch Custom Field IDs for a Jira Issue Type

Now the fun part — let’s ask Jira:

“What are all the fields (and their IDs) for this specific issue type in this specific project?”

Use this curl command below (replace with your email/token):

curl -s -u your_email@example.com:your_api_token \
  -X GET "https://yourcompany.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/createmeta?projectKeys=MYPROJECT&issuetypeIds=10001&expand=projects.issuetypes.fields" \
  | jq .

What’s Happening Here?

Let’s break it down:

---

We’ll get something like this:

{
  "customfield_10057": {
    "name": "Summary",
    "required": true,
    "schema": {
      "type": "string"
    }
  },
  "customfield_10058": {
    "name": "Description",
    "required": false,
    "schema": {
      "type": "option"
    }
  }
}

What We’ll See:

• customfield_10057 and customfield_10058 are the custom field IDs.

• name tells us the human-readable name of the field (e.g., "Idea Summary").

• required tells us whether this field is required when submitting a Jira issue.

• schema gives us the field’s type (e.g., string, option).

📝 Example Field Mapping:

• customfield_10057 → "Summary" (a required text field).

• customfield_10058 → "Description" (an optional dropdown field).

These are the IDs we’ll use to submit data to Jira programmatically.

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🛟 Extra Tips

• If we don’t know our issue type ID (10001), we can use this to list them:

curl -s -u your_email@example.com:your_api_token \
  -X GET "https://yourcompany.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/createmeta?projectKeys=MYPROJECT" \
  | jq '.projects[0].issuetypes | map({id, name})'

• Don’t have jq installed? Install it with:

brew install jq  # macOS
sudo apt install jq  # Ubuntu
choco install jq  # Windows (Chocolatey)

Happy coding!