Test 'URIs Should Be Properly Constructed' limits usage of templates

[pavelsalamon]

With newly added test URIs Should Be Properly Constructed, it's impossible to produce url as template output dynamically.

I was producing template output in this way:

"outputs": {
    "ServerUrl": {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "[concat('http://', reference(variables('publicIPAddressName')).dnsSettings.fqdn, '/somepath')]"
    }
  }

This doesn't pass through the test because of usage of concat function.

However, I can't produce the url without using concat function - trying to use uri() instead is not possible because uri() is too restrictive on its first parameter. Any attempt to use uri() function fails with errors like these:

The template language function 'uri' expects its first argument to be a uri string. The provided value is 'http://'

Here's an example of my attempt with uri:

"outputs": {
    "ServerUrl": {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "[uri(uri('http://', reference(variables('publicIPAddressName')).dnsSettings.fqdn), 'somepath')]"
    }
}

I tried putting various strings as first parameter of uri: http, http:, http:// and they all fail. It only accepts uri with some path in it, but I can only produce that using concat function.

[bmoore-msft]

We are also incorrectly flagging concat/format in the value - it should be disallowed at the beginning of the expression only.

@pavelsalamon - the proper format for your case would be:

"outputs": {
    "ServerUrl": {
      "type": "string",
      "value": "[uri(concat('http://', reference(variables('publicIPAddressName')).dnsSettings.fqdn), 'somepath')]"
    }
}

But the test will also flag that (you may have tried already) - so the test is to broad in it's assumptions and needs to be fixed.

[bmoore-msft]

I've commented out the test for now...

[StartAutomating]

👍 let's see how we can improve this.

[bmoore-msft]

#564

[grube]

A few days ago our ARM template validation tests started failing with this error:

We are creating a dynamic URL like this:
"myURL": "[concat('https://mydownloaddeployment=', guid(deployment().name))]",
could it be related to this change?

[bmoore-msft]

Likely as the test was re-enabled... the test is checking for the uri function and flagging other functions for creating URLs/URIs... So flagging:

"myURL": "[concat('https://mydownloaddeployment=', guid(deployment().name))]",

would be intentional.

The fix would be to use the uri() function.

[grube]

Yes, using of Concat() inside of URI() function works, and passes validation.
Just needed to tweak a bit my Uri and split it in base and relative parts, something like this:

"myURL": "[uri('https://',concat('mydownloaddeployment=', guid(deployment().name)))]"