Variable encoding

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1

Hi

When using the “Configuration variables” to update the connectionstrings of my release it is encoding the “&” within the SQL users password.
e.g.
variable:Password value:P&ssword
once the config file has update I get “P&ssword”.

Is this intended behaviour and if so is there a way to override it?

2

Hi,

Thanks for reaching out. The Configuration Variable should apply the raw value of the variable into the config file. Could you send us the following info:

  • screenshots of how the variable looks like on your Project (same thing you sent already, but on a screenshot)

  • complete line of your config file after the update. You might wanna run a mock deployment here with fake data that also uses the “&” character

  • Version of Octopus you are running

I’ve set the conversation as private so only you and our staff can see its contents.

Thanks,

Dalmiro

3

Thanks for getting back so quickly.

I’ve attached the requested info.

Cheers Dennis

OctopusVariableIssue.docx (323 KB)

4

Hi Dennis,

Good news it that works OK on my end as i expected. Let me show you my config:

  1. Connection string pre-deploy looks as shown on pre-web.config

  2. The variable config looks like variable.jpg

  3. The deployment step with the feature Variable substitution enabled looks as shown on DeployStep.jpg

  4. Connection String post-deploy looks like post-web.config

Please try to replicate that config and let me know how it goes

Thanks,

Dalmiro

Pre-Web.config (4 KB)

variable.JPG
variable.JPG1112×278 15.6 KB

DeployStep.JPG
DeployStep.JPG1990×681 45.8 KB

Post-Web.config (4 KB)

5

Unfortunately I can’t use variable substitution at the moment as the development team set the connection string as a valid connection for their local machine. I use the Configuration variables option to replace the entire connection string.

As you could see from my variables I build the connection string from multiple variables as I need to have the password as sensitive. However even if I include the password in the connection string it still encodes it.

Can you re-do your testing to match how I’ve done it and see if your implementation encodes the variables.

Cheers Dennis

6

Hi Dennis,

Sorry for not testing it properly the previous time. The problem seems to happen when the variables are nested. I’ve created a github issue for this

Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for being so diligent sending all the data to reproduce this.

Dalmiro

7

Hi Dennis, this is by design - &'s are special characters in XML files which need to be escaped. If you type:

    <add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Database=Foo;Server=Bar;Password=P&ssword;"
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

Into a Visual Studio configuration file, VS will even show that the “&ssword” is invalid markup. Replacing it with &amp; is the correct behavior here if you want the password to work.

Hope this helps,

Paul

8

I’m getting a similar issues. I’m substituting a connection string in azure using the ‘configuration variables’ in octopus v3.1.1 for a web app. The azure connection string contains a “”" but octopus is converting this to “&quot;”

9

Hi Stephen,

Have you tried replacing the & alone with &amp; in the connection string as recommended by Paul?

Thanks,

Dalmiro

10

Yes. That’s when I then get &amp;quot; output. The problem seems to be that octopus is html encoding the & into &

11

Hi Stephen,

Could you share us the config file via email so we can check this out? Please send it to support@OctopusDeploy.com .

Thanks,

Dalmiro

12

i’ve just hit this issue with an Entity Framework connection string. There is no choice here because the EF connection string format uses " which gets rendered to the web.config as &quot;

Are there any solutions to this?

13

Ah my bad. I copied the web.config value so that the variable contained " instead of the literal "

14

Hi Rory,

I ended up refactoring the code to supply the connection string manually from another config setting. It would be great if it could be fixed in Octopus Deploy though.

Regards

+Steve