Forum Discussion
Passing a here-string as adhoc Output Variable
In Azure DevOps pipelines, when you set a variable using the `Write-Host` command as you've shown in your example, the variable is set to the value until the first newline character. To set a multi-line variable, you can use a different approach. You can use the `Write-Host` command with multiple `##vso[task.setvariable]` commands to set the variable line by line.
Here's an example of how you can set a multi-line variable in PowerShell:
$lines = @( "This is some text that I want to send", "to another task in my pipeline.", "This is another line of text." ) foreach ($line in $lines) { Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=scriptOutputMsg;isOutput=true]$line" }This PowerShell script creates an array of lines and then iterates through the lines, setting the `scriptOutputMsg` variable one line at a time. The `isOutput=true` parameter is used to indicate that this is an output variable.
In your downstream tasks, you can access this multi-line variable as `$(scriptOutputMsg)` and it will retain all the lines you've set in the loop.
In Azure DevOps pipelines, when you set a variable using the `Write-Host` command as you've shown in your example, the variable is set to the value until the first newline character. To set a multi-line variable, you can use a different approach. You can use the `Write-Host` command with multiple `##vso[task.setvariable]` commands to set the variable line by line.
Here's an example of how you can set a multi-line variable in PowerShell:
$lines = @(
"This is some text that I want to send",
"to another task in my pipeline.",
"This is another line of text."
)
foreach ($line in $lines) {
Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=scriptOutputMsg;isOutput=true]$line"
}
This PowerShell script creates an array of lines and then iterates through the lines, setting the `scriptOutputMsg` variable one line at a time. The `isOutput=true` parameter is used to indicate that this is an output variable.
In your downstream tasks, you can access this multi-line variable as `$(scriptOutputMsg)` and it will retain all the lines you've set in the loop.
Robina This solution does not work. Calling set variable multiple times will overwrite the previous value. However, you can use percent encoding to convert new lines into "%0A". Once processed it will be converted back into a new line when the variable is set.
This is briefly mentioned under this section: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/set-variables-scripts?view=azure-devops&tabs=bash#set-an-output-variable-for-use-in-future-stages
Preston2330
As Robina mentioned you need to replace the carriage return character with encoded new line character.$MultilineString=@" This is test for showing multi lines in Azure Devops pipeline "@ $output=$MultilineString -replace "`n", "%0D%0A"You can pass the $output variable to the rest of pipeline
- Thanks, I can confirm using "%0A" as "new line" char works. I've finally managed to update my docker build template to accept the list of versions for tagging.
