ADF - Variables as type object

Question

I see that the parameters in a pipeline can be of type object, but there is no option to have a variable as an object type.

I am setting a variable in one pipeline and from another pipeline, I am fetching the details of this set activity, to get the value of that variable. Now it would help if this variable was a json object, so that I can manipulate the values in the object accordingly. Currently I am not able to do this - it will become complicated/messy if I try to do this with string/array (which are the other types applicable for the variable).

Answer 1

Hello @Kothai Ramanathan and thank you for your question. Please allow me to demonstrate how to convert and manipulate in an easier way than direct string parsing.

In this (attatched) pipeline, I start with an object parameter:
{"id":1,"complex":{"foo":"bar","val":true}}

I will show how to convert to string, and back, then extracting a property.

Suppose I need to store my object into a variable. What I do is use a string type variable and cast the object to string.
@string(pipeline().parameters.input)
Note that doing so adds in escape characters.

Next I will parse it back from string to object, and extract a property.
@json(variables('asString')).complex.foo
The json() un-escapes and converts into an object. Then I can extract individual properties.

If I wanted to get the boolean property val I can do that and store in a boolean type variable instead of string.

If I wanted to capture a complex sub-object rather than a single primitive property, I would need to convert back to string again.
@string( json(variables('asString')).complex )

In rare cases I have seen json stored as string inside another object. In such cases I have used multiple json() calls to achieve my objectives.

23341-objecthandle.txt

Please let me know if this helps or if you have any questions.
Thank you
Martin