Preserve Indentation when inserting variable lists in a template

[OctopusSchaff]

Say I have an octopus variable that has a list of items in it. For example, the variable is called ContainerEnvironmentVariables and it has the following key values pairs in it:

Environment: Dev
LoggerService: https://myloggerservice.com
DbConnectionString: myDbConnectionString

I have a spot in my yaml that I insert this string. It looks like this:

env:
  #{ContainerEnvironmentVariables}

Unfortunately, after the variable substitution it looks like this:

env:
  Environment: Dev
LoggerService: https://myloggerservice.com
DbConnectionString: myDbConnectionString

The first one is correctly indented and the others are not. Yaml is whitespace sensitive, so I have to get the spaces in there.

Does the Octopus Deploy Template system support a “Preserve Indentation” kind of feature?

[Daniel_Fischer]

Hi @OctopusSchaff,

Thanks for getting in touch! So the variable replacement here is a fairly simple process. It is basically doing an exact replacement in your file. So if you have new lines in your variable, the first line will be indented just as #{ContainerEnvironmentVariables} is. Your subsequent lines are technically each on a new line and Octopus will apply that new line in the transformation.

You have a few options available to resolve this. As a quick workaround, you could try adding the spacing to the variable in Octopus so it applies the indentation as a part of the substitution.

A tidier solution would be to use the YAML replacement feature. Our documentation has details on how you can do this, though I have an example below of what it would look like for you.

For an Octopus variable named env

{"Environment":"Dev","LoggerService":"https://myloggerservice.com","DbConnectionString":"myDbConnectionString"}

This method should keep the YAML formatting.

Let me know if this helps or if you have any questions or issues with this.

Best regards,
Daniel