Is there a way to loop over all outputs from stageDependencies in Azure DevOps? - azure

Question

I want to loop over all the outputs of dependent stages and check if any of them are set to a specific value which would indicate there was a problem. Is this possible, and if so, how?
I'm having trouble finding any relevant documentation on stageDependencies outside of using them in job conditions. I know the code below doesn't work, but I've tried a few variations on this and I'm not even seeing the stageDependencies object.
- task: PowerShell#2
displayName: Check for Failures
inputs:
targetType: inline
script: |
foreach ($dependency in $[stageDependencies]) {
foreach ($job in $dependency) {
foreach ($output in $job.outputs) {
if ("$output" -eq "Started") {
write-host "##vso[task.logissue type=error]Task failed in a previous step"
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

The pipeline can output variables through the logging command, but the variables can only be strings:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/variables?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml%2Cbatch#set-variables-in-scripts
All variables set by this method are treated as strings.
It is not difficult to parse a string and put it into an array, just use the function(split()) that comes with the string type to split and restore.
Here is an example:
trigger:
- none
# 1
stages:
- stage: s1
displayName: setvars
jobs:
- job: testJob
steps:
- task: PowerShell#2
name: setvar
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
# logic here. For example you get the vars and put it into this format:
$testvars = "testvar1,testvar2,testvar3"
Write-Host "##vso[task.setvariable variable=outputvars;isOutput=true]$testvars"
# 2
- stage: s2
displayName: getvars
dependsOn: s1
variables:
vars: $[ stageDependencies.s1.testJob.outputs['setvar.outputvars'] ]
jobs:
- job:
steps:
- task: PowerShell#2
inputs:
targetType: 'inline'
script: |
$varsArr = "$(vars)".Split(',')
foreach ($var in $varsArr)
{
Write-Host "$var`r`n"
if($var -eq 'testvar1')
{
Write-Host 'The value is correct.'
}
}
Result: