I'm trying to use MSBuild items to list the number of wildcard paths that can be evaluated in relation to a as-yet-unknown base path. As such, I'd like to be able to write:
<Item Include="Content\**\*.js" />
But not evaluate that as a path, but instead add it as a simple item whose %(Identity) is still the string "Content\**\*.js".
Is this possible in MSBuild?
As you have discovered, the item identity needs to be escaped. MSbuild has intrinsic functions to do this easily so you don't need to look up every character:
<ItemGroup>
<Item Include="$([MSBuild]::Escape('Content\**\*'))" />
</ItemGroup>
As is often the case, I discovered the answer immediately after posting.
As per MSBuild Special Characters, I need to escape the asterisk as %2A
Related
I have an MSBuild SDK that we use for our projects. We define various default properties and add custom items depending on the project type. Some of those items are added in the SDK.targets, after the user project is parsed.
I found a situation where I'd like to add some items but only if the user does not have them added themselves (to use whatever metadata values they have set).
Best way I found to achieve that is the following:
<Target Name="IncludeDefaults">
<ItemGroup>
<CustomItem Include="Foo" Value="Default"
Condition="#(CustomItem->Equals('Foo')->Distinct()) == 'False'"/>
</ItemGroup>
</Target>
I know I can exclude items using Remove but that only ignores exact matches, including metadata. I tried various other combinations of attributes and processing to get around that but nothing seems to have worked.
In particular I have multiple items to add with default metadata so I'm looking for a single line solution.
Is this the best way of doing it, or is there something I'm missing?
If I understand correctly, you have named data values and you want to provide default values if values have not already been provided.
Consider using properties.
The following example is very idiomatic MSBuild. The Condition tests that the property does not already have a value.
<PropertyGroup>
<Foo Condition="'$(Foo)' == ''">Default</Foo>
<Bar Condition="'$(Bar)' == ''">AnotherDefault</Bar>
</PropertyGroup>
In addition to PropertyGroup elements in files, properties can be defined by environment variables and by the command line /p switch so there is a lot of flexibility with defining and overriding properties.
But your question is about ItemGroup and I may be making an incorrect assumption about your intent.
Remove is for removing items that are already in the ItemGroup collection.
There is an Exclude that works with Include and behaves as a 'deny' list. In the following example if there is already a 'Foo' item in 'CustomItem', it will be excluded from the Include.
<ItemGroup>
<CustomItem Include="Foo" Value="Default" Exclude="#(CustomItem)"/>
</ItemGroup>
The Exclude doesn't check metadata. It only compares the names. If CustomItem has items 'Foo' and 'Bar', then #(CustomItem) will be 'Foo;Bar' and 'Foo' will denied from the Include.
This feels like it's so simple, but I cannot get it to work.
All I'm trying to achieve is a filtered list of the embedded resources. I've tried various approaches but I can't seem to get it right.
Here's what I thought was the right solution:
<ItemGroup>
<AllEmbeddedResources Include="#(EmbeddedResource)" Condition="$(FullPath.Contains('Change')"/>
</ItemGroup>
Edit...
To clarify, the results are without the condition, the list is all embedded resources, with the condition, the group is empty.
I've tried this inside and outside of target's, and I've tried getting the full list in one group, and then filtering in a separate group. I know I'm just misunderstanding some fundamental part of msbuild syntax, I just can't seem to work it out. Looking forward to being shown my stupid mistake!
Inside a target, this can be done using the batching syntax for items and using the System.String.Copy method to be able to call instance functions on the string:
<Target Name="ListAllEmbeddedResources">
<ItemGroup>
<AllEmbeddedResources Include="#(EmbeddedResource)" Condition="$([System.String]::Copy(%(FullPath)).Contains('Change'))" />
</ItemGroup>
<Message Importance="high" Text="AllEmbeddedResources: %(AllEmbeddedResources.Identity)" />
</Target>
Note that this syntax only works inside a target and not during static evaluation (item group directly under the <Project> node).
The Condition Attribute must return a boolean, and it operates on each element of the itemgroup.
You can access each element using %(Identity).
Say you have some unfiltered itemgroup called UnfilteredItems, and you want to filter those into a group called MyFilteredItems, using some regex pattern.
<ItemGroup>
<MyFilteredItems Include="#(UnfilteredItems)" Condition="$([System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::Match(%(Identity),'.*\\bin\\.*').Success)"/>
</ItemGroup>
I read a build number from my TFS Team build which looks like "AB-1.2.3.4-CDE-REV.1". I want to edit this number and remove the last decimal point and make it look like "AB-1.2.3.4-CDE-REV1".
Usually when you want to manipulate strings in msbuild you're looking to use Property Functions. In the documentation of those you'll read you can use String functions so next up is figuring out which methods of System.String you need. In this case: LastIndexOf and Remove should do the trick:
<!-- BuildNumber property is fetched elsewhere -->
<PropertyGroup>
<BuildNumber>AB-1.2.3.4-CDE-REV.1</BuildNumber>
</BuildNumber>
<Target Name="ManipulateBuildNumber">
<PropertyGroup>
<BuildNumber>$(BuildNumber.Remove($(BuildNumber.LastIndexOf('.')),1))</BuildNumber>
</PropertyGroup>
<Message Text="New build number is $(BuildNumber)" />
</Target>
Thanks for the solution stijn. It works. I had figured out another lame and crude way of doing it.
<BuildNumber>AB-1.2.3.4-CDE-REV.1</BuildNumber>
<Part1>$(BuildNumber.Split('.')[0])</Part1>
<Part2>$(BuildNumber.Split('.')[1])</Part2>
<Part3>$(BuildNumber.Split('.')[2])</Part3>
<Part4>$(BuildNumber.Split('.')[3])</Part4>
<Part5>$(BuildNumber.Split('.')[4])</Part5>
<BuildNumber>$(Part1).$(Part2).$(Part3).$(Part4)$(Part5)</BuildNumber>
I tried to have a condition on a Target tag, but resulted with the error:
target has a reference to item metadata. References
to item metadata are not allowed in target conditions unless they are part of an item transform.
So i found this work around:
How to add item transform to VS2012 .proj msbuild file
and tried to implement it, but i can't figure up what i am doing wrong because it's not working as expected.
<CallTarget Targets="CopyOldWebConfigJs" />
<Target Name="CopyOldWebConfigJs"
Inputs="#(ContentFiltered)"
Outputs="%(Identity).Dummy"
DependsOnTargets="webConfigJsCase">
<Message Text="web.config.js Case" />
</Target>
<!-- New target to pre-filter list -->
<Target Name="webConfigJsCase"
Inputs="#(FileToPublish)"
Outputs="%(Identity).Dummy">
<ItemGroup>
<ContentFiltered Condition="$([System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex]::IsMatch('%(FileToPublish.Filename)%(FileToPublish.Extension)', 'web.config.js'))" />
</ItemGroup>
</Target>
I thought that Inputs="#(ContentFiltered)" will contain the lines that DependsOnTargets="webConfigJsCase" find.
But when i run it , i am getting this message: Skipping target "CopyOldWebConfigJs" because it has no inputs.
I know for a fact that the regex work, and it do find a filename_ext that equals web.config.js so it return True
What do i do or understand wrong?
In <ItemGroup><Item/></ItemGroup>, no change will be made to the Item item because no action was specified. If you want to add entries to the item, you must specify Include="".
The <Item/> documentation describes the various attributes for item elements inside of an <ItemGroup/>. Note that at the top-level of an MSBuild file, directly under the <Project/> element, you would use the attributes Include and Exclude while in a <Target/> you would use the attributes Include and Remove. Not including any attributes at all is nonsensical and—as far as I know—no different than simply deleting the entire line. I am surprised MSBuild doesn’t throw an error or warning this is almost certainly a mistake and not intentional.
The Inputs and Outputs attributes on your <Target Name="webConfigJsCase"/> are unnecessary. In fact, they slow MSBuild down by making it loop over the target unnecessarily. You can filter just in the <Item/> like this:
<Target Name="webConfigJsCase">
<ItemGroup>
<ContentFiltered Condition="'%(FileToPublish.Filename)%(FileToPublish.Extension)' == 'web.config.js'" Include="#(FileToPublish)" />
</ItemGroup>
</Target>
Additionally, I assume that you intended your regular expression to match web.config.js but not match webaconfigbjs. You don’t need to use an advanced feature like Regular Expressions here because MSBuild’s built-in condition operators already support simple string comparison. If fixed the condition above to be more readable.
So in my targets file, I've got a line that looks like this:
<XmlPeek Namespaces="" XmlInputPath="file.xml" Query="/data/#AttributeOne">
<Output TaskParameter="Result" ItemName="my_AttributeOne" />
</XmlPeek>
in "file.xml", I have:
<data AttributeOne="abc" AttributeTwo="def" />
it also reads a few other attributes.
When the attribute has data, everything works fine... but when I leave AttributeOne as an empty string (""), XmlPeek blows chunks with the following error:
The "XmlPeek" task's outputs could not be retrieved from the "Result" parameter. Parameter "includeEscaped" cannot have zero length.
if I remove the attribute ENTIRELY, it works fine (the resulting item is obviously and understandably blank)
The question is... how can I DETERMINE, WITHOUT blowing chunks, the value of a blank attribute... whether by pre-testing for a value, or by correctly handling the blank, or some other means.
CONSTRAINT: the only real requirement is to stick to the built-in tasks (XmlPeek)... I'm aware of XmlRead in the community tasks... for various reasons, I want to use out-of-the-box tasks.
Thanks in advance!
The error happens because an empty string is being used as the Item Identifier. I guess identifiers cannot be the empty string. If you remove the attribute then the result is null and no Item is created so that's why that doesn't throw an error.
Maybe try return the result as a Property instead of an Item.
If you do not need to distinguish between the attribute being omitted versus having an empty value, you can prevent the error by inserting the condition [#AttributeOne!=''] into the query as follows.
<XmlPeek Namespaces="" XmlInputPath="file.xml" Query="/data[#AttributeOne!='']/#AttributeOne">
<Output TaskParameter="Result" ItemName="my_AttributeOne" />
</XmlPeek>