Month: February 2023

There are times when you simply need to replace tokens with actual values in text files during the deployment phase of a solution. These text files may be parameter or app setting files or even infrastructure as  code files such as ARM/Bicep templates.

Here I will be building a reusable template to insert the pipeline build number as a Tag on some LogicApps every time the resources are deployed from the release pipeline. Using the process describe below can easily be used to replace user defined tokens in other types of text files by supplying the path to the file to search in, the token signature and the replacement value.

I used the PS script below to read in the text file contents and then search and replace the token with the required value. The PS script uses several parameters so it may be reused throughout the release pipeline for many different text file types and tokens.

The PS script is called from a template file below which takes a list of files to search as one of the template parameters. This allows me to search for the token across multiple files in one hit. The template iterates through each file calling the PS script and passing the file path and the other required parameters.

The yml release pipeline file is shown below which calls the template at line 19 to replace the tokens in the LogicApp.parameters.json files. In this scenario, the token name to search for is specified at line 24.  You need to ensure the chosen token name does not clash with any other valid text.

The last step at line 27 deploys the LogicApps to the specified resource group.

Executing the pipeline will read the following LogicApp parameter file from the source code folder on the build agent and then replace the buildNumber token with the actual value.

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentParameters.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "parameters": {
    "environment":{
      "value": null
    },
    "businessUnitName":{
      "value": "n/a"
    },
    "buildNumber":{
      "value": "%_buildNumber_%"
    }
  }
}

After running through the token replacement step, the buildNumber is updated with the desired value.

The full source code for this article is available on Github here: https://github.com/connectedcircuits/tokenreplacement. I tend to use this template with my other blog about using global parameter files here: https://connectedcircuits.blog/2022/11/17/using-global-parameter-files-in-a-ci-cd-pipeline/

Enjoy…