parameters groups in apb.yml

[ruromero]

After working on some APBs I found quite error prone and difficult to maintain the fact that is not possible to aggregate different sets of parameters in multiple plans.

Given the following plans with parameters:

• Ephemeral
  • admin_user
  • admin_password
• Persistent
  • admin_user
  • admin_password
  • db_size

This setup forces the developer to duplicate all the parameter definitions. In some of my cases this can get up to 4 different plans and over 30 parameters.

It would be great to have something of this sort:

• Ephemeral
  • &_auth_params
• Persistent
  • &_auth_params
  • &_persistence_params

[djzager]

In the end, it is just YAML. If you can use anchors and aliases to construct valid YAML, then it shouldn't be a problem. I'm not sure what we could do to improve on this.

[ruromero]

@djzager Indeed I don't see how this could be possible with the current model and without any pre-processing. Anchors and aliases don't allow adding elements to lists. Maybe defining all the possible parameters as aliases and then just overriding things like required or display_group would reduce the errors and the duplicated code. What do you think?

# External Maven Repository
_apb_maven_repo_url: &_apb_maven_repo_url
  name: apb_maven_repo_url
  title: Maven Repository URL
  description: External Maven Repository URL. Leave empty to use the repository provided by Business Central
  required: false
  type: string
  display_group: External Maven Repository
_apb_maven_repo_user: &_apb_maven_repo_user
  name: apb_maven_repo_user
  title: Maven Repository Username
  description: Username to use to interact with the external Maven repository.
  required: false
  type: string
  display_group: External Maven Repository
_apb_maven_repo_pwd: &_apb_maven_repo_pwd
  name: apb_maven_repo_pwd
  title: Maven Repository Password
  description: Password to use to interact with the external Maven repository.
  required: false
  type: string
  display_type: password
  display_group: External Maven Repository

...
parameters:

      # External Maven Repository
      - <<: *_apb_maven_repo_url
        required: true
      - *_apb_maven_repo_user
      - *_apb_maven_repo_pwd