String array function Join
in some cases, I need to concatenate several references (variables) which have rather long names (or complex object structures).
The standard approach (Concat(...)) makes for a very long lines.
Since multi-line values aren't supported (another area for improvement), the current approach I use is to create an array of each segment, since each member of the array can be its own line.
Ideally I'd like to take that array and just Join(string[], "")... but currently I can't, so I'm forced to concat(var[0], "", var[1], "_", var[2]).
The inclusion of a JOIN function would SIGNIFICANTLY simplify the variable's definition.
Scott Brickey
shared this idea
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12 comments
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Jeremy Simmons
commented
it's shocking this isn't here. How could this not be part of the base runtime the functionality is built on top of.
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Larry Dorman
commented
I built on to Ximon Eighteen's suggestion. It's the best terrible solution I've found, so far. I was worried that the beginning and end of my data was at risk, so I added a beginning and ending element to make the search unique.
"myArray": [
"***",
"abc",
"def",
"ghi",
"***"
],
"myString": "[replace(replace(replace(string(variables('myArray')), '\",\"', ''), '[\"***', ''), '***\"]', '')]""exampleOutput1": {
"type": "String",
"value": "abcdefghi" -
victor
commented
I strongly agree with this much needed feature. The scenario: I have a string parameters "Project-One-April-26". I want to create a string variable "ProjectOneApril26".
In JavaScript, all I need to do is run "Project-One-April-26".split('-').join(''). but I can't do that in ARM template because concat() does not allow merging an array of strings into a single string.
It would be very helpful to have a function that takes an array (or arrays) of strings, and concatenate all the strings into a single string as output. Thank you!
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Parker Shelton
commented
+1. We have a scenario where we need to call listKeys() on an unknown number of storage accounts, then concatenate the results together into a single JSON dictionary. Neither concat() or format() appear to work in this scenario with an unknown number of arguments and there's no for() equivalent to loop and append.
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Anonymous
commented
lol I can't believe there are a bunch of string methods, but the most common used: join is not there.Let's say I want to provide users with an array parameter, I don't know beforehand how many items it will contain. But I need to make them all into a string seperated by a character (like semicolon or comma).
AWS already got this: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/intrinsic-function-reference-join.html
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Hal
commented
Constructing a Kusto query from multiple variables (e.g. serverName, database name, maxDurationThreshold, etc.)
The simple thing to do might be to simply update concat to treat a single array argument as an array whose members are to be joined.
concat(variables('myArray'))
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Alexander Batishchev commented
Hi. I'd love to share my scenarios. Please provide an email address. Or ping alexbat internally. Thanks!
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Any update on this?
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Bryan Wood
commented
@joep I agree, there is the 'split' function in the string functions, but there is no inverse function in the array/object functions to 'join'.
There should be a way to join that is native to the ARM template SDK. while @Ximon does have a decent solution, one would have to include this every time they need it in a function linked, nested or direct.
Copy and paste is not true code reuse. Its code rewrite.
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Joep Joosten
commented
@Ximon Eighteen, yes this works, but it doesn't look nice...
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Joep Joosten
commented
If you add split as an ARM template function, you'll also need a join...
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Ximon Eighteen
commented
There's still no join function but a recent addition was user-defined functions. With that we can do the following:
{
"$schema": "http://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json",
"contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
"parameters": {
"lines": {
"type": "array",
"defaultValue": [
"one\n",
"two\n",
"three"
]
}
},
"variables": {
},
"functions": [
{
"namespace": "ximon18",
"members": {
"join": {
"parameters": [
{
"name": "lines",
"type": "array"
}
],
"output": {
"type": "string",
"value": "[replace(replace(replace(string(parameters('lines')), '[\"', ''), '\"]', ''), '\",\"', '')]"
}
}
}
}
],
"resources": [
],
"outputs": {
"test": {
"value": "[ximon18.join(parameters('lines'))]",
"type": "string"
}
}
}Does that help?