Use global Variables and Release Variables inside the forEach Part

[metda11]

Hello,

I’m extremely excited about the potential of your extension for generating release notes! However, I’m currently facing a few issues and was hoping you could help me troubleshoot them.

1. Printing the Stage:
   I’d like to display the stage in my release notes using a global environment variable. I attempted to use the following syntax, but it doesn’t seem to work:

   **Stage:** {{$env:RELEASE_ENVIRONMENTNAME}}
   

   Could you please check if I’ve made an error in the syntax or if there’s another method I should use?

2. Filtering Work Items by Tag:
   I need to filter the work items using a specific tag, which corresponds to the name of the release ({{releaseDetails.releaseDefinition.name}}). I’ve tried several different syntaxes, but none of them seem to work. Here’s an excerpt of my current code:

   {{#if workItems}}
      {{#forEach this.workItems}}
         {{#if (and (eq (lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType') 'User Story') (eq (lookup this.fields 'Custom.UserStoryType') 'New Development'))}}
            {{#if (contains (lookup this.fields 'System.Tags') {{releaseDetails.releaseDefinition.name}})}}
               *  {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}} #{{this.id}} {{lookup this.fields 'System.Tags'}}
            {{/if}}
         {{/if}}
      {{/forEach}}
   {{/if}}
   

   Do you have any suggestions on how to modify the syntax to properly filter the work items?

3. Eliminating Duplicate Parent Work Items:
   I’m grouping the work items (Bugs/Tasks) and printing the parents (User Stories) in a separate section. Since there is a 1:N relationship between User Stories (parents) and Bugs/Tasks (children), some User Stories appear multiple times. Is there a way to print only a unique list of User Stories without duplicates?

🔧 included UserStories:

{{#if workItems}}
{{#forEach this.workItems}}
   {{#if (eq (lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType') 'User Story')}}
*  {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}} #{{this.id}}
   {{/if}}
   {{#if relations}}
      {{#forEach this.relations}}
         {{#if (contains this.attributes.name 'Parent')}}
            {{#with (lookup_a_work_item ../../relatedWorkItems  this.url)}}
               {{#if (eq (lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType') 'User Story')}}
*  {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}} #{{this.id}}
               {{/if}}
               {{#if relations}}
                  {{#forEach this.relations}}
                     {{#if (contains this.attributes.name 'Parent')}}
                        {{#with (lookup_a_work_item ../../../../relatedWorkItems  this.url)}}
                           {{#if (eq (lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType') 'User Story')}}
*  {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}} #{{this.id}}
                           {{/if}}
                        {{/with}}
                     {{/if}}
                  {{/forEach}}
               {{/if}}
            {{/with}}
         {{/if}}
      {{/forEach}}
   {{/if}}
{{/forEach}}
{{/if}}

Thank you very much for your guidance and help.

[rfennell]

Stage Names (environment variables)

Using environment variables does not work e.g. {{$env:RELEASE_ENVIRONMENTNAME}} it is all down to how Handlbars does the template expansion.

If you using an inline handlebars template (in the YAML pipeline) you can use the $(release.environmentname) syntax as this gets expanded before being passed into the Handlbars process.

The other option is to write a custom handlebars extension to get the environment variable

Tag Filtering

Again a custom handlebars extension maybe the answer again here, sometime it is easier to sort the logic on JavaScript.

That said, I can't see anything wrong with the Handlebars logic you have. In cases such as this I tend to output each value into the release notes to see what the values actually are. If you are not using it already use the ]local test console](https://github.com/rfennell/AzurePipelines/tree/main/Extensions/XplatGenerateReleaseNotes/XplatGenerateReleaseNotesTask/testconsole) to make repeated reruns much easier

{{#if workItems}}
   {{#forEach this.workItems}}
      ## debug dump
      WIT {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}}
      UCT {{lookup this.fields 'Custom.UserStoryType'}}
      Tags {{lookup this.fields 'System.Tags}}
      Release {{releaseDetails.releaseDefinition.name}}
      {{#if (and (eq (lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType') 'User Story') (eq (lookup this.fields 'Custom.UserStoryType') 'New Development'))}}
         {{#if (contains (lookup this.fields 'System.Tags') {{releaseDetails.releaseDefinition.name}})}}
            *  {{lookup this.fields 'System.WorkItemType'}} #{{this.id}} {{lookup this.fields 'System.Tags'}}
         {{/if}}
      {{/if}}
   {{/forEach}}
{{/if}}

Sorry I don't have a better option

Duplicate Handling

No easy answer to this one, again a custom handlebars extension may hemp, but I am struggling to see how. The samples here might provide some ideas on array filtering

[metda11]

Thanks Richard, I will dive into it :-)