No support for jsonc files

[kilasuit]

On a quick scan of this repo there's no support at all for using jsonc files, which whilst uncommon compared to normal json files should be allowed as ARM is happy with accepting deployments that use jsonc files.

[nerddtvg]

I would also like to see this!

[kilasuit]

Looking more and more into this there are a few parts to this.

-This codebase uses lines like this this & this that could be amended to match on either json/jsonc files

• Jsonc files can be converted to objects in PowerShell v6= but not in v5.1 - as per discussion in this issue - Add .jsonc support to ConvertFrom-Json PowerShell/PowerShell#7436 - which for this tool I think should not be an issue anyway & if we made this a PowerShell v7.0 or above compatable tool this would also allow us to remove this file & the overriding ConvertFrom-Json funtion completely

So I propose 2 things

• edit all the code that is looking for explicit .json to match on both .json & .jsonc

either

• make this a PowerShell v7 and above tool & remove the need for the custom ConvertFrom-Json function.
• rename ConvertFrom-Json to either ConvertFromJson or ConvertFrom-JsonWithComment and update the codebase accordingly as it's better not to override core powershell functionality for others (even if technically it provides better functionality)

My preference would be to update to be compliant with PowerShell 7 as that is what many build & release pipelines will be using in other tooling (Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions) so should no be an issue & is where most likely run the arm-ttk anyway - I know that is where we would be running it using Sam Cogans extension (which would also need a PR to incorporate this) however if you would prefer to keep this compliant with v5.1 I'd be happy to put in the PR for the change of the ConvertFrom-Json function as opposed to removing it.

[bmoore-msft]

Are you asking for jsonc because you want support for comments in the files? Or because you want no quotes around properties (for example)?

If the former, I don't mind a PR that looks for *.json and *.jsonc - if the latter, ARM doesn't actually like that so............

[kilasuit]

My use case is just for comments in series of files where they are complex (lots of linked templates being used)
I'd be happy to add a PR for this I don't mind a PR that looks for *.json and *.jsonc and also which ever of these two suggestions at the same time

• make this a PowerShell v7 and above tool & remove the need for the custom ConvertFrom-Json function.
• rename ConvertFrom-Json to either ConvertFromJson or ConvertFrom-JsonWithComment and update the codebase accordingly as it's better not to override core powershell functionality for others (even if technically it provides better functionality)

[bmoore-msft]

I would separate things a bit...

1. the need to handle comments, which are one "feature" of jsonc that ARM also supports, this should be as simple as looking for .json or .jsonc - maybe slightly more since mainTemplate/azuredeploy are specifically used but I think that should be relatively straightforward.

re: PSv7 - I would separate this work item and probably wait until V7 GAs, we've run into an issue or two in V7 and given ConvertFrom-JSON is working would wait until there is a greater need for that...

Thoughts?

[kilasuit]

Yeah I was going to raise as 2 PR's as opposed to one anyway (already have started for jsonc support in #206 ) & have moved the conversation about clean up into #207