Azure Devops(VSTS) Release Pipeline Variables

Question

Hopefully I can keep this as clear and simple as possible. I'm trying to replace variables in my web.config based upon an environment. Currently I am able to replace other variables such as the one in my connection string and app settings by putting the variable in the format "#{variablename}#. This is not working for the variable in the endpoint address.

I was previously using replace tokens to accomplish this but it must now be built into azure because I don't have any extra task in the build or in the release task that's performing the replacement. Unless it's somewhere else that I'm not aware of. I have searched everything I could find and I am not seeing a reason why the value in this section isn't replace I thought it was replacing based off of name but I don't see why this value won't replace.

This replacement works with VariableName ConnectionString

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="ConnectionString" connectionString="#{ConnectionString}#" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
  </connectionStrings>

This doesn't work with VariableName ServiceSoapEndPoint

<system.serviceModel>
    <bindings>
      <basicHttpBinding>
        <binding name="Service" />
      </basicHttpBinding>
      <customBinding>
        <binding name="Service1">
          <textMessageEncoding messageVersion="Soap1" />
          <httpTransport />
        </binding>
      </customBinding>
    </bindings>
    <client>
      <endpoint address="#{ServiceSoapEndPoint}#" binding="basicHttpBinding"
        bindingConfigu`enter code here`ration="ServiceSoap" contract="Service.ServiceSoap"
        name="ServiceSoapEndPoint" />
    </client>

What do the logs indicate when running the replacement? What appears in the web.config once the application is deployed? — Daniel Mann
I will have to check the logs to get the exact information. The variable that was put in is what shows in the web.config. I’m about to run the process to try and get the logs. — Ron
So I checked the logs and there was nothing about the replace happening so I'm not sure how it's even working since I don't have the ask on the build or releases. But I created a variable in app settings with the name that I was trying to use and it replaced, so I don't know if the issue is because of the node level that it's at within the web.config. — Ron
It looks like this issue is similar to the one from this question, I'm researching now to see if this can resolve mine as well. stackoverflow.com/questions/48101028/… — Ron

Ron Ron · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-28T17:16:19

I wasn't able to find the exact solution I was looking for so I ended up doing a work around to accomplish this. I was basically trying to have environment variables so that when I would publish it would change the endpoint address based on the environment. Since I was able to get the value to change in the appsettings element I did a work around to instantiate the soap service using the value read from the appsettings value.

Azure Devops(VSTS) Release Pipeline Variables

1 Answers