Update variables using the REST API

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1

Hey Paul

I tried doing the following on our system and managed to break everything :slight_smile:

curl octopus/api/projects/projects-98/variables/49c6c06e-54ea-4bdb-a7da-a4596e9ef3ab -XPUT -d
 "{
  "Name": "MyVariableName",
  "Value": "TheValue"
}"

What I get back is a 200 OK with the Name, Value, Environment and StepId set to null.

{
  "Id": "49c6c06e-54ea-4bdb-a7da-a4596e9ef3ab",
  "Name": null,
  "Value": null,
  "ProjectId": "projects-98",
  "Role": null,
  "EnvironmentId": null,
  "StepId": null,
  "Links": {
    "Self": "/api/projects/projects-98/variables/49c6c06e-54ea-4bdb-a7da-a4596e9ef3ab",
    "Project": "/api/projects/projects-98"
  },
  "IsEditable": true,
  "IsVisible": true
}

I try and log into octopus and fix the issue and everything is broken. Upon querying the api it spits out a json parse error.

To fix it I had to go into raven and change the data manually.

Okay so the question is ā€¦

How can I set a project variable using the REST API?

Thanks again

Antony

2

Hi Antony,

First, you would need to do a ā€˜POSTā€™ rather than a ā€˜PUTā€™ to add a variable. If you want to update an existing variable, you would have to list them, then work out the one to change, and then do a PUT including the Id of the variable (the GUID) to update. This is because a variable can be defined multiple times with different scopes.

I think youā€™ll also need to include the Content-type: application/json header in your request so that our model binder knows you are sending JSON. Currently it seems to be ignoring the content.

Hope that helps,

Paul

3

Hey Paul thanks it was essentially the content-type causing problems (Iā€™d specified it incorrectly in the client I was using).

And yes I was trying to update an existing variable, I should have been clearer in my question.
Some feedback and opinions on behavior I didnā€™t expect, no doubt there in your back log but I hope you donā€™t mind me giving my pennies worth.

If Iā€™m trying to update the value only, when providing the payload

{
"value":"newvalue"
}

In my option no other values should change other than ā€œvalueā€ rather than setting the entire resource. As a side if you donā€™t specify name it getā€™s set to null and causes everything to break with parse errors. If its required put some validation on it and let me know if I fail to meet it.

Perhaps itā€™s more of an ideological vs practical argument. Should I have to specify the complete resource when trying to set it? Maybe I should but if I did it would be nice to get some hints about the ones that I do, even if I have to explicitly set them to null, something like this perhapps?

{
  "Name": "ExternalDataApi",
  "Value": "https://sssdataservices-api.fundapps.co/",
  "Role": null,
  "EnvironmentId": "DeploymentEnvironments-353",
  "StepId": null
}

Then anything else just returns a validation error.

Thanks again

Antony

4

Hi Anthony,

For 2.0 weā€™re working on some changes to the API, and this will include more documentation and better validation for activities like this. Youā€™ll get validation errors when required fields arenā€™t provided, and there will be some metadata available to describe the fields that can be changed from the API.

Currently the API exists alongside the website, so it doesnā€™t get a lot of love. For 2.0 weā€™ll actually be making the API the primary way of interacting with Octopus, and the web portal will be rewritten so that it works solely through the API.

(That said, Iā€™m not sure if weā€™ll support a patching API like you describe, itā€™s likely that weā€™ll still expect the full resource to be PUT back)

Paul