Is there an index token in the Repetition statement of the Variable Substitution Syntax?

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#1

According to the documentation at http://docs.octopusdeploy.com/display/OD/Variable+Substitution+Syntax, a variable can be used to perform a repetition of substitutions but there is no way to obtain a position or index value to use during the iteration. So lets say I have the following variable:

Name: URLs
Value: www.google.com,www.yahoo.com,www.bing.com

And given the following transformation:

<URLs>
#{each url in URLs}
    <add key="**#{index}**" value="#{url}" />
#{/each}
</URLs>

I would expect an ouput like:

<URLs>
    <add key="0" value="www.google.com" />
    <add key="1" value="www.yahoo.com" />
    <add key="2" value="www.bing.com" />
</URLs>

Is there such a placeholder that could be used for this purpose?

#2

Hi Rmardeni,

Thanks for getting in touch! You can use the Iterating over sets of values feature outlined in that document. In your case, you variables would look something like this:

Name                   Value
Urls[1].Value         www.google.com 
Urls[2].Value         www.yahoo.com

And the transformation:

<URLs>
#{each url in Urls}
    <add key="#{url}" value="#{url.Value}" />
#{/each}
</URLs>

Hope that helps!

Robert W

#3

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the reply, I had not noticed that the value between parenthesis was available; however this approach yields a large number of variables in the context that I am using it.

I have 4 URLs that are different per environment and we have a total of 13 different environments, so this approach requires a total of 52 variables instead of just 13 variables.

I noticed that OctoStache uses the Sparce library and that there are other values that could be made available for the purpose of transformations to have more flexibility like the one I am mentioning. I will add it as a suggestion to the roadmap.

#4

Hi Rmardeni,

Is there some sort of pattern to the URLs? For example you could have the variables:

Name                   Value                                                            Scope
Customer              alice                                                            Test
Urls[1].Value         #{Customer}.foo.com 
Urls[2].Value         #{Octopus.Environment.Name}.foo.com

Robert W

#5

Certainly not something I can use to greatly reduce the number of variables.

#7