Can an array variable defined in Azure DevOps "variable group"

Question

I want to define some variables in Azure devops "variable group" which will be used in Powershell, but when the variable type is string it works, but some is array or object went wrong. mine look like below. left is the name,right is the value

vmAlertedArray_backup => @("wbubuntu","wbubuntu2")

1.when in azure devops script I use, it went wrong

$vmAlertedArray_backup = $env:vmAlertedArray_backup foreach($c in $vmAlertedArray_backup){ Write-Host "$c" }

2.below in powershell in local works

$vmAlertedArray_backup = @("wbubuntu","wbubuntu2") foreach($c in $vmAlertedArray_backup){ Write-Host "$c" }

Can any one show some experience about this? thanks

Answer 1

It is suggested to only pass variables as string. If you want to pass an object to other tasks, you can use "ConvertTo-Json -Compress" to convert it to a json string.

$objectString = $object | ConvertTo-Json -Compress
Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=objectString;]$objectString"

And in the next PS task, you can pass it as environment variable. But, please enclose the variables in single quotes.

And then you can use "ConvertFrom-Json" to convert the string to an object.

$getFromEnv = $env:objectString | ConvertFrom-Json
foreach( $obj in $getFromEnv){
    Write-Host ("displayName:{0} Id:{1}" -f $obj.displayName, $obj.Id)
} 

Answer 2

I just pass the variable in as a string and then split it to create an array in PowerShell

Variable = Prod1,Prod2,Prod3

$array = $variable.Split(',)

If need be you can add a Trim to the end in case there are spaces

Variable = Prod1,Prod2 ,Prod3

$array = $workspaces.Split(',').trim()