Variable substitution in config, JSON files in Azure DevOps Pipeline

Question

I am a bit new in Azure DevOps. I know there is way that we can do XML transformation and JSON variable replacement. We can define key, value and json variable in library and that would update in release pipeline. Is there any way like just replacing a variable value in any file (config, json). for example I define a library value (hello = world), and Release pipeline task would find and replace $hello in config, json file and replace it with "world". I am trying to use replace tokens as below.

Yes I was looking at same. Looks like its not replacing the values. Do you see any configuration issue as below

steps: - task: qetza.replacetokens.replacetokens-task.replacetokens@3 displayName: 'Replace tokens in **/*.config **/*.json' inputs: targetFiles: | **/*.config **/*.json verbosity: detailed tokenPrefix: '{' tokenSuffix: '}'

log as below

2020-05-11T18:44:01.6149125Z ##[section]Starting: Replace tokens in **/*.config **/*.json 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6363261Z ============================================================================== 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6363986Z Task : Replace Tokens 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6364452Z Description : Replace tokens in files 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6364873Z Version : 3.6.0 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6365252Z Author : Guillaume Rouchon 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6365919Z Help : v3.6.0 - [More Information](https://github.com/qetza/vsts-replacetokens-task#readme) 2020-05-11T18:44:01.6366694Z ============================================================================== 2020-05-11T18:44:02.2020864Z pattern: \{\s*((?:(?!\{)(?!\s*\}).)*)\s*\} 2020-05-11T18:44:02.2247835Z replaced 0 tokens out of 0 in 0 file(s) in 0.04 seconds. 2020-05-11T18:44:03.1202699Z ##[section]Finishing: Replace tokens in **/*.config **/*.json Library value

myhello = Hello

Value in appsettngs.config

<section name="{myhello}" type="Exceptionless.ExceptionlessSection, Exceptionless" />

Answer 1

Yes. You can use token replace task. Please check this extension

I used your configuration (I just changed target folder to find a place wher I keep files) with this file.

steps: 
- task: replacetokens@3
  displayName: 'Replace tokens in *.config *.json'
  inputs:
    targetFiles: |
     stackoverflow/23-token-replace/*.config
     stackoverflow/23-token-replace/*.json
    verbosity: detailed
    tokenPrefix: '{'
    tokenSuffix: '}'

config file:

<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="sampleSection"
             type="System.Configuration.SingleTagSectionHandler" />
    <section name="{myhello}" type="Exceptionless.ExceptionlessSection, Exceptionless" />
  </configSections>
  <sampleSection setting1="Value1"
                 setting2="value two"
                 setting3="third value" />
</configuration>

And all went fine. Here you have a log for a build.

replacing tokens in: /home/vsts/work/1/s/stackoverflow/23-token-replace/appsettings.config
  using encoding: ascii
  myhello: Hello
  1 tokens replaced out of 1
replaced 1 tokens out of 1 in 1 file(s) in 0.033 seconds.

All looks fine. Are you sure you have a correct targetFiles? **/*.config means that extension will look for any-folder-name/any-file-name.config located in your root folder.

Answer 2

The error replaced 0 tokens out of 0 in 0 file(s) in 0.04 seconds indicates the config or json files were not found in the default working directory.

Below are the possible reasons that the config/json files not found in the default working directory.

1, Your artifacts published from build pipeline is zipped. If the config/json files reside in the zipped artifacts, they cannot be found by the replacetoken task.

So you need to check if the artifacts downloaded in release pipeline is a zip file. If it is zipped, you need to add the Extract files task to unzip it before replacetoken task.

You can easily check the artifacts by clicking the 3dots highlighted in below screenshot.

2, If the config/json files are not in the default working directory. You need to specify in Root directory field the path to the folder where the config/json files reside.

Hope above helps!