Assistance with an encoding issue

[blake-duffey]

I’ve read this thread about 20 times: https://help.octopusdeploy.com/discussions/problems/3609-ampersand-and-escaping-of-environment-variables

My issue is I’m dealing with an entity framework connection string and regardless of what I do, it gets mangled during the deploy by some kind of encoding change.

The connection string looks like this:

<add name="PMOEntities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/Models.PMOModel.csdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.ssdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;data source=foo.server.org;initial catalog=PMO;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

If I put this as an Octopus variable, it changes the & to _&_ which cause the site to error out. I’ve tried replacing &quot with ‘’ (two single quotes) - and while that works if i put that in the web.config, the tentacle happily starts chopping things up again during deployment by changing one of the " (double quotes) into ".

While i tend to agree with some of the posters on the aforementioned thread who suggested an option ‘this works, just use this, don’t encode it, I’m sure, leave me alone’ - I’m not looking to start another discussion. What I AM looking for is some wisdom on how to format this connection string such that it will work as an Octopus variable AND in the web.config.

Thank you for your time.

[Shane_Gill]

Hi Blake,

Thanks for getting in touch. That thread you linked to is a mind bender.

I think you want to use double quotes instead of "
For example, the variable (I cut some out):

provider connection string="data source=foo.server.org;initial catalog=PMO;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework"

In the web.config becomes:

provider connection string="data source=foo.server.org;initial catalog=PMO;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework"

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Shane

[blake-duffey]

Thanks sir - i’ll try that today and report back

Blake

[blake-duffey]

So when i follow this advice i get this error:

Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 126.

The resulting connection string is encoded thusly:

<add name="PMOEntities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/Models.PMOModel.csdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.ssdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;data source=foo.server.org;initial catalog=PMO;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework&quot;&quot; providerName=&quot;System.Data.EntityClient&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

Unfortunately when you cut some of the fluff out, i think you cut some of the complexity out too.

[Shane_Gill]

Hi Blake,

In the example you just sent, it looks like the provider name is included in the connection string:

providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"

I think the full escaped connection string variable you want is:

metadata=res://*/Models.PMOModel.csdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.ssdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string="data source=foo.server.org;initial catalog=PMO;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework"

Which should result in:

metadata=res://*/Models.PMOModel.csdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.ssdl|res://*/Models.PMOModel.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string="data source=foo.server.org;initial catalog=PMO;integrated security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework"

Which exactly matches the connection string part in your original post.

Cheers,
Shane