Escape for pulumi config set on Windows CMD and PowerShell

[guitarrapc]

TL;DR

pulumi config set data '{"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}' works on bash, but not on CMD and PowerShell.

CMD and PowerShell requires additional escape.

pulumi config set data "{""active"""": true, ""nums"""": [1,2,3]}"

Actual behavior

Document told pulumi config set data '{"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}' to set JSON to the config.

REF: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/intro/concepts/programming-model/#config

Running on Bash will set valid JSON to the config.

$ pulumi config set data '{"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}'
$ pulumi config
# result with bash
data         {"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}

However CMD will result error as follows.

CMD> pulumi config set data '{"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}'

Configuration values can be accessed when a stack is being deployed and used to configure behavior.
If a value is not present on the command line, pulumi will prompt for the value. Multi-line values
may be set by piping a file to standard in.

The `--path` flag can be used to set a value inside a map or list:

    - `pulumi config set --path outer.inner value` will set the value of `outer` to a map `inner: value`.
    - `pulumi config set --path names[0] a` will set the value to a list with the first item `a`.

Usage:
  pulumi config set <key> [value] [flags]

PowerShell will not return error, but register invalid JSON, as key missing double quote.

PS> pulumi config set data '{"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}'
PS> pulumi config
data         {active: true, nums: [1,2,3]}

Workaround

You need escape JSON key with additional double quote for both CMD and PowerShell.

• begin: 2 double quote ""
• end: 4 double quote """"

PowerShell's JSON string should be quote with ' for simplify problem. Double quote requires additional escape:(

CMD> pulumi config set data "{""active"""": true, ""nums"""": [1,2,3]}"
CMD> pulumi config
data         {"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}

PS> pulumi config set data '{""active"""": true, ""nums"""": [1,2,3]}'
PS> pulumi config
data         {"active": true, "nums": [1,2,3]}

Expected behavior

This may not a Pulumi problem but CMD and PowerShell shell design.
Additional note to a doc would be appreciated.

PowerShell argument would be fixable...?

[justinvp]

Thanks for letting us know about this @guitarrapc! Most of our command line snippets in the docs are for a Unix shell like bash, but we could certainly do a better job showing the equivalent PowerShell/CMD commands for Windows. I've transferred the issue to the docs repo.

Note that in this particular case, we have a new feature we recently added (and still need to document more prominently) that could help set this structured config data without having to specify it as JSON.

pulumi config set --path data.active true
pulumi config set --path data.nums[0] 1
pulumi config set --path data.nums[1] 2
pulumi config set --path data.nums[2] 3

[guitarrapc]

thanks justinvp! New feature seems bririant!
YAML and structured access way like that is very useful.

[justinvp]

I went ahead and updated this particular example to demonstrate the new structured config functionality: #2068