[BUG]: YAML literal date variables are parsed as date

[qetza]

What happened?

Hi,
When defining variable values in YAML that that represents literal dates those values are always parsed as datetime instead of being left as strings so the value is not the one expected. This does not happen with variable group values.

Example of YAML build:

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

trigger: none

variables:
- name: dateWithoutQuotes
  value: 2020-01-01T22:32:00Z
- name: dateWithSingleQuotes
  value: '2020-01-01T22:32:00Z'
- name: dateWithDoubleQuotes
  value: "2020-01-01T22:32:00Z"
- name: dateWithExplicitType
  value: !!str 2020-01-01T22:32:00Z
- group: "issue-325"

steps:
- pwsh: 'gci env:'
  displayName: dump env

The variable group issue-325 has the following variables:

Here is the output of the task dumping the environment variables with the variable values:

As you can see only the variable from the variable group has kept it's original value all others were parsed as datetime even though the values are quoted or explicitly set as string.

This is making issues with the users of my task replace tokens (issues qetza/vsts-replacetokens-task#325 and qetza/vsts-replacetokens-task#176)

Is there any way to force the string value (no parsing) or is this an issue in the agent when reading YAML variables?

Thanks

Versions

Azure DevOps Services

Environment type (Please select at least one enviroment where you face this issue)

• Self-Hosted
• Microsoft Hosted
• VMSS Pool
• Container

Azure DevOps Server type

dev.azure.com (formerly visualstudio.com)

Azure DevOps Server Version (if applicable)

No response

Operation system

Ubuntu Latest

Version controll system

Azure Git Repository

Relevant log output

No response

[ismayilov-ismayil]

Hi @qetza, thanks for reporting.

Could you please check triple single quote as escape symbol as shown below:

- name: dateWithEscape
  value: '''2020-01-01T22:32:00Z'''

[qetza]

Hi @ismayilov-ismayil,
Using the triple single quote will avoid the parsing as datetime but the single quotes are kept in the value:

[qetza]

Hi @ismayilov-ismayil,
Any news on this issue?

[ZackE4]

Hi @qetza I encountered the same issue and was able to work around it by setting the variable type to secret, this caused the pipeline to treat it as a string literal rather than a date

[qetza]

@ZackE4, thanks for the workaround.
@ismayilov-ismayil an news on a fix?

[github-actions]

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