I have a PowerShell script in my Azure DevOps pipeline:

- task: PowerShell@2
  displayName: Get_records
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    script: |
        <...>
        $records.Records

$records.Records is some variable which contains array of records. I need to use this data this way: for each record in this array I need to perfome several tasks within one job. Something like this:

stages:
- stage: stage_1
  jobs:
  - job: Job_1

    - task: PowerShell@2
      displayName: Get_records
      inputs:
        targetType: 'inline'
        script: |
          <..getting this records..>
          $records.Records

    - ${{each records in variables.records.Records}}:

      - task: not_powershell
        displayName: name1
        inputs:
          AsyncOperation: true
          MaxAsyncWaitTime: '60'
    
      - task: not_powershell
        displayName: name2
        inputs:
          AsyncOperation: true
          MaxAsyncWaitTime: '60'

How can I do that? There are a couple questions about this:

1. How to use '$records.Records' variable in foreach loop? Must I save variable before using? If yes - how to save an array?
2. If it is imposible to do it this way, probably there are some ways around, for example use several stages, jobs... etc?

CodePudding user response：

No, you can't. It only works for parameters, not variables:

You can use the each keyword to loop through parameters

This is because:

• before it runs, the yaml is parsed and compiled into a pipeline structure, with all the stages, jobs and tasks defined. This is the point when the loop condition is evaluated, and the loop is expanded into multiple stages/jobs/tasks.
• dynamic runtime variables are not yet available at compile-time, so they cannot be used at this point to define the each loop.
• at runtime, when the dynamic variable is available, the pipeline structure is already fixed, so it is not possible to add extra tasks at this point.

Workaround

You can't loop over a dynamic array variable in the pipeline; but one place you can do so is within a task, for example within a powershell script:

- task: PowerShell@2
  displayName: Loop Over Records
  inputs:
    targetType: 'inline'
    script: |
      # first, get the records
      ForEach ($record in $records.Records) {
        # do something with $record
      }

That isn't as powerful as a pipeline loop, with all the different types of non-powershell tasks available, but it might be the only way to loop over this array.