Tag: powershell

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Update variable group using Azure DevOps rest API – pipeline example

Following my previous article about how to update a variable group using POSTMAN, I will now document how to implement the same behavior through a pipeline.

Update variable group using Azure DevOps rest API – POSTMAN

First things first you will need a PAT. I have included this PAT in a different variable group than the one that I will update. this is because when you update the variable group, all the variables that are inside will get lost. If you need to retain them, you should have to get them first and then add them again on the variable group.

For this reason I have created a variable group named token-group which holds my PAT. I also made this variable a secret.

The variable group that I will update has the name of var-group and the id of 5.

The pipeline includes two tasks. The first task will loop through the variables on the group and print them out. The second task will update the variable group based on the JSON that you provided. You should change your ORG and project URLs.

trigger:
– none
pr: none
pool:
vmImage: ubuntu-latest
variables:
– group: token-group
steps:
– task: PowerShell@2
displayName: Get variables from variable-group
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
$connectionToken="$(PAT)"
$base64AuthInfo= [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(":$($connectionToken)"))
$URL = "https://dev.azure.com/geralexgr/test-project/_apis/distributedtask/variablegroups?groupIds=5&api-version=7.1-preview.1"
$Result = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $URL -Headers @{authorization = "Basic $base64AuthInfo"} -Method Get
$Variable = $Result.value.variables | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 100
Write-Host $Variable
– task: PowerShell@2
displayName: add variables on variable-group
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
$connectionToken="$(PAT)"
$base64AuthInfo= [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(":$($connectionToken)"))
$URL = "https://dev.azure.com/GeralexGR/test-project/_apis/distributedtask/variablegroups/5?api-version=5.1-preview.1"
$body = '{"id":5,"type":"Vsts","name":"var-group","variables":{"rest-var1":{"isSecret":false,"value":"rest-var-value-1"},"rest-var2":{"isSecret":false,"value":"rest-var-value-2"},"rest-var3":{"isSecret":false,"value":"rest-var-value-3"}}}'
$Result = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $URL -Headers @{authorization = "Basic $base64AuthInfo"} -Method Put -Body $body -ContentType "application/json"
$Variable = $Result.value.variables | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 100
Write-Host $Variable
view raw update-variable-group-powershell-azure-devops hosted with ❤ by GitHub

After running the pipeline you will notice a null output on the update of the variable group. This is the requested result and as task has not failed your var group will get updated.

Variables inside json

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Powershell options for tasks – Azure Devops

Powershell is used very often on Azure DevOps tasks, as with it you can implement functionality that is not supported out of the box.

In this article I will explain some options that you may need during your executions.

You can fail a task on Azure Devops with powershell checks. For instance you can integrate your logic and if you get a response that is not the requested you can fail the task.

Fail a powershell task on Azure DevOps

$json = WebServiceCall ConvertFrom-Json
if ($json.value-eq "correct") { Write-Host success }  else { exit 1  }

Continue a failed task on Azure DevOps.

Under control options you should enable continue on error

This will result on a partial success.


Retry a failed task on failure

Run the task under certain conditions

Change working directory of powershell

When running a file path and not an inline script you can also define arguments

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Powershell handle Invoke-WebRequest 404 error

In some cases you may need to use Invoke-WebRequest of powershell as a correct result with status code of 404. A use case for this scenario would be a smoke test for a particular service or URL. In newer powershell versions you can use SkipHttpErrorCheck in order to stop powershell from failing the script.

The below example is a simple Web request that will fail on Powershell <7 with an exception if a 404 response is returned from the webpage.

$req = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -Method GET

The parameter that you could use with Powershell 7++ and you would not have the powershell task failed would be.

$req = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -Method GET -SkipHttpErrorCheck

In order to bypass this issue you could handle the exception on Powershell <7 and add your logic inside the catch block. For example

try {
    $resultApi = MakeWebRequest("http://localhost:1234/api/console") 
}
catch {
    if( $_.Exception.Response.StatusCode.Value__ -eq 404 ) 
    {
        Write-Host "API console Test 404 , proceeding ..."
    }
    else {
        Write-Host "False response..."
    }
}
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Automatically update your GitHub repositories with a powershell script

Developers often have a lot of repositories stored on their local machines. These repositories get updated from other developers and they stay outdated. In many cases developers forget to fetch and pull the latest changes on those repositories and when they commit code, the IDE will notify of the new changes. When this is the case, the commit will get an non explanatory message as the latest of the commit and you will have to navigate on the actual commit to verify the changes and commit message.

Commit message
Merge branch test/v3.0.0 of https://github.com/org/repository

In order to resolve this issue, you can create a powershell script that can automatically fetch the latest changes of your local repositories. You will need to change your repositories base location.

#change your github location
$github_directory = "C:\Users\galexiou\Documents\GitHub"
Get-ChildItem $github_directory | ForEach-Object {
if($_.Attributes -eq "Directory")
{
Write-Host $_.FullName
Set-Location $_.FullName
git fetch
git pull
}
}
view raw github-update.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

As you can see from the output below this script will go and fetch the latest changes on the repositories that have been updated.

You can also create a cron job or an automated windows task in order to run this job automatically on computer startup or on your work schedule start. For example

On task scheduler press create task

and select your triggers (when this task will run) along with the action. This will be the run of the powershell script. On the argument you must specify the -File location (where you stored your powershell script).