YAML pipeline definition which retrieves variables values from pipeline variables - azure-devops

Question

I have a YAML file which forms an Azure DevOps pipeline. The pipeline itself defines four variables which are needed in the variables section of the YAML...
variables:
environmentIdentifier: "$(environmentIdentifier)"
keyVaultSourceName: "$(keyVaultSourceName)"
location: "$(location)"
locationIdentifier: "$(locationIdentifier)"
The variables are definitely set for each run of the pipeline, but when it runs I encounter errors further down in my script which indicate that these variables were not populated correctly...
ERROR: (InvalidResourceGroup) The provided resource group name 'rg-main-$(locationIdentifier)' has these invalid characters: '$:'. The name can only be a letter, digit, '-', '.', '(', ')' or '_'.
I've also tried...
$env:location
${{variables['location']}}
...but incurred the same error.
How should I correctly declare vars in the variables section of the pipeline definition, where their values are retrieved from the pipeline's variables?

Answer 1

You need to define as:
variables:
- name: location
value: 'Australia Southeast'
If you want them at a later stage as a template expression use:
${{ variables.location }}
and if you want to use them inside a script:
steps:
- bash: echo $(location)
- powershell: echo $(location)
- script: echo $(location)
Check this Link and the below extracted sample for more information.
variables:
- name: one
value: initialValue
steps:
- script: |
echo ${{ variables.one }} # outputs initialValue
echo $(one)
displayName: First variable pass
- bash: echo '##vso[task.setvariable variable=one]secondValue'
displayName: Set new variable value
- script: |
echo ${{ variables.one }} # outputs initialValue
echo $(one) # outputs secondValue
displayName: Second variable pass