Unable to deploy Azure ARM with parameters using az cli from powershell script - azure

Question

Trying simple deployment with parameters from a PS script:
$prefix = "xxx"
$location = "switzerlandnorth"
az deployment group create `
--name $timestamp `
--resource-group $resourceGroupName `
--mode incremental `
--verbose `
--template-file .\src\ops\scripts\arm.json `
--parameters "{ `"location`": { `"value`": `"$location`" },`"projectPrefix`": { `"value`": `"$prefix`" } }"
Response with error:
Unable to parse parameter: { location: { value: switzerlandnorth }, projectPrefix: { value: xxx } }
Running from a PS1 script.

Answer 1

As we can see in the error that it is unable to parse the parameters. The correct way to pass the parameters to the az deployment group create command is:
az deployment group create `
--name $timestamp `
--resource-group $resourceGroupName `
--mode "incremental" `
--verbose `
--template-file ".\src\ops\scripts\arm.json" `
--parameters '{ \"location\": { \"value\": \"switzerlandnorth\" },\"projectPrefix\": { \"value\": \"xxx\" } }'
Update:
If you want to pass the PowerShell variables in the Parameters you can do something like below -
$location = "switzerlandnorth"
$projectPrefix = "xxx"
$params = '{ \"location\": { \"value\": \" ' + $location + '\" },\"projectPrefix\": { \"value\": \"' + $projectprefix + '\" } }'
az deployment group create `
--name $timestamp `
--resource-group $resourceGroupName `
--mode "incremental" `
--verbose `
--template-file ".\src\ops\scripts\arm.json" `
--parameters $params
Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Another way you can think of this is using objects/hashtables in PS and then converting to JSON, e.g.
$param = #{
location = "switzerlandnorth"
prefix = "foo"
}
$paramJSON = ($param | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 30 -Compress).Replace('"', '\"') # escape quotes in order to pass the command via pwsh.exe
az deployment group create -g $resourceGroupName--template-file "azuredeploy.json" -p $paramJson
This is a similar example:
https://gist.github.com/bmoore-msft/d578c815f319af7eb20d9d97df9bf657

Answer 3

I'll throw in my two cents here because previous answers are slim on what we are actually doing here. In short the az deployment group create command wants the --parameters argument to be a double serialized JSON string {scoff}. In order to create a value that can be handled by az deployment group create we would need to do something like this:
$stupidlyFormattedParam = #{
someAppSetting1 = #{ value = "setting 1" }
someAppSetting2 = #{ value = "setting 2" }
} | ConvertTo-Json -Compress -Depth 10 | ConvertTo-Json
az deployment group create --name someName--resource-group someGroup --parameters $stupidlyFormattedParam --template-file .\someFile.json