Errors with some characters in multi-line body strings

[nwhittaker]

Passing a multi-line body sometimes produces an error depending on the contents of the string. Here are a few of the errors I've encountered:

---

Asterisks

body: |
  *TODO*

produces

::error::unidentified alias "TODO*" (1:7)

 1 | *TODO*
----------^

---

Colon

body: |
  message
  TODO:

produces

::error::end of the stream or a document separator is expected (2:5)

 1 | Message
 2 | TODO:
---------^

---

One workaround is to double-pipe the body as mentioned in #6 (comment).

body: |
  |
  ...

[gr2m]

I think we could change the behavior of how the YAML strings are parsed in this line

request-action/index.js

Line 61 in 5c012a1

result[inputName] = yaml.load(value);

if value.trim() starts with |\s*\n, we could bypass yaml.load(value). What do you think?

[nwhittaker]

if value.trim() starts with |\s*\n, we could bypass yaml.load(value). What do you think?

I think that sounds reasonable. Are you basically just forgoing yaml.load() if the value is a block scalar? How about if the string includes a block header (e.g. |+2), or uses the folded style (>) instead?

[gr2m]

Are you basically just forgoing yaml.load() if the value is a block scalar

yes, that's the idea

How about if the string includes a block header (e.g. |+2), or uses the folded style (>) instead?

🤷🏼 this might get pretty complex pretty quick, hm? I don't know what the best approach could be. Maybe for the time being we should at least document the workaround using two |?

[nwhittaker]

🤷🏼 this might get pretty complex pretty quick, hm? I don't know what the best approach could be.

Agreed -- I don't have too much experience with yaml, but maybe there's a yaml library that can report the data type for a value?

Maybe for the time being we should at least document the workaround using two |?

Sounds good to me.

[gr2m]

Maybe for the time being we should at least document the workaround using two |?

Sounds good to me.

could you send a PR? I can do it myself, eventually, but would appreciate the help

[nwhittaker]

Added #81. Not sure if I totally understand why the behavior is the way it is, or what exactly the intended happy-path is with regards to property values (json or yaml?), but I think these examples should help with getting things working.

[gr2m]

resolved with #81