I have a pipeline on Azure Devops that I'm trying to run programatically/headless using the REST api: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/pipelines/runs/run%20pipeline?view=azure-devops-rest-6.0
So far so good, I can auth and start a run. I would like to pass data to this pipeline which the docs suggests is possible using variables
in the request body. My request body:
{
"variables": {
"HELLO_WORLD": {
"isSecret": false,
"value": "HelloWorldValue"
}
}
}
My pipeline YAML looks like this:
trigger: none
pr: none
pool:
vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'
steps:
- task: Bash@3
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
KEY=$(HELLO_WORLD)
echo "Hello world key: " $KEY
This however gives me an error that "HELLO_WORLD: command not found".
I have tried adding a "HELLO_WORLD" variable to the pipeline and enabled the "Let users override this value when running this pipeline"-setting. This results in the HELLO_WORLD
variable no longer being unknown, but instead its stuck on its initial value and not set when i trigger a run with the REST api
How do you pass variables to a pipeline using the REST api? It is important that the variable value is set only for a specific run/build
I found another API to run a build, but it seems like you cannot use Personal Access Token auth with it, like you can with the pipeline api - only OAuth2 - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/azure/devops/build/builds/queue?view=azure-devops-rest-6.0
You can do it with both the Runs API and Build Queue API, both work with Personal Access Tokens. For which one is the better/preferred, see this question: Difference between Azure Devops Builds - Queue vs run pipeline REST APIs, but in short the Runs API will be the more future proof option
POST https://dev.azure.com/{{organization}}/{{project}}/_apis/pipelines/{{PipelineId}}/runs?api-version=6.0-preview.1
Your body will be of type application/json
(HTTP header Content-Type
is set to application/json
) and similar to the below, just replace resources.repositories.self.refName
with the appropriate value
{
"resources": {
"repositories": {
"self": {
"refName": "refs/heads/main"
}
}
},
"variables": {
"HELLO_WORLD": {
"isSecret": false,
"value": "HelloWorldValue"
}
}
}
POST https://dev.azure.com/{{organization}}/{{project}}/_apis/build/builds?api-version=6.0
Your body will be of type application/json
(HTTP header Content-Type
is set to application/json
), something similar to below, just replace definition.id
and sourcebranch
with appropriate values. Please also note the "stringified" content of the parameter section (it should be a string representation of a json map)
{
"parameters": "{\"HELLO_WORLD\":\"HelloWorldValue\"}",
"definition": {
"id": 1
},
"sourceBranch": "refs/heads/main"
}