Suggestion: escape file path JSON file

[jeanfrancoislarente]

Hello,

I'm trying to use Replace Tokens to set a file path in a .json file.
My token is @@assets.root@@ and my variable has a normal file path. If this wasn't a .json file everything behaves as it should. However as you know in json the paths need to be escaped.

C:\my-path needs to be c:\\my-path.

Just hoping that this would make it in future versions (logic to escape paths when target is .json extension).

[qetza]

Hi Jean-Francois,
The task doesn't do any analysis on the file type or the values but only plain text parsing and replace so i don't see how to add this request.

Could you escape the value in the variable directly?

[jeanfrancoislarente]

Problem is I use built-in VSTS variables (such as $(System.ArtifactsDirectory) ) as part of my variable value which itself isn't escaped.

My workaround was to create a PowerShell task to set those variables in my .json file - but that defeats the purpose of (trying) to use tokens and a nice extension like this one.

[samuelhl]

Hi @jeanfrancoislarente

I'm curious as to how exactly you used a PowerShell task for this as I've run into the exact same issue using JSONs on TFS2017. If you could go into a bit more detail on your workaround that would be great.

Thanks.

[jeanfrancoislarente]

I brute forced it - I just used powershell to explicitly take the parameters and replace them where they need to be set - there is no magical token replacement.

[samuelhl]

OK, thanks for the reply.

[qetza]

Hi,
Sorry i didn't replied earlier, one solution if you want to use tokens and do escaping would be to:

• use a powershell task to get your variables values, escape them and create new variables with the escaped values
• use the replace token task with token names based on the new variable names

This can be done using vsts agent commands (https://github.com/Microsoft/vsts-tasks/blob/master/docs/authoring/commands.md)

[qetza]

Hi @jeanfrancoislarente and @samuelhl,
I've been thinking and here is a proposal of evolution of the task

• add advance parameters Escape character and Characters to escape
• when reading a variable value, if the above parameters are set, the task will replace any character in Characters to escape with the character prefixed with Escape character before replacing the token.

So if you put \ as escape character and \" as characters to escape it should work in your json files.

Would this evolution work for you?

[jeanfrancoislarente]

I imagine that would work?
No matter what the scenario is, "" should become "\" in a .json target file

[qetza]

I just released v2.3.0 of the task which includes the 2 parameters to allow escaping characters.