Pipeline Expression Reference

Pipeline expressions allow you to reference arbitrary values about the state of your system in the execution of your pipelines.

For more information about how pipeline expressions work, see the overview .

Syntax elements

Each pipeline expression is made of $ followed by opening/closing brackets: ${ }. Within these brackets, you can add arbitrary expressions to access and modify the details of your pipeline during pipeline execution.

Note that expressions can’t be nested: ${ expression1 ${expression2} } won’t be evaluated.

Code

Spinnaker allows you to execute Java code within a pipeline expression. This can be useful for string manipulation or more advanced custom logic than would otherwise be possible. For security reasons, you can only call methods of specifically allowed Java classes. You can find the full list of allowed classes here .

You can use methods directly on existing map values based on their Java class. For example, you can process a list of values entered as a parameter using Java’s String split() function, provided users enter them using a standard split character. You can process the list us-east-1,us-west-1,eu-west-1 with the expression ${parameters.regions.split(",")}.

You can instantiate new classes inside of an expression using the fully qualified package name. For example, you might want to use the SimpleDateFormat class to get the current date in MM-dd-yyyy format. You can do this using the expression ${new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy").format(new java.util.Date())}.

Similarly, you can call static methods using the syntax T(fully.qualified.class.name).methodName(). For example, to calculate the date 5 days from now, you can call: ${T(java.time.LocalDate).now().plusDays(5).toString()}.

Comparisons

You can use relational operators to compare values in an expression, such as ${instance["size"] > 400} or ${parameters["runCanary"] == "true"}.

Note that you may need to transform some values for the comparisons to work properly. In the example above, parameters["runCanary"] returns a string rather than a boolean. To use it in a comparision, you need to either compare it to a string or convert it to a boolean: ${#toBoolean(parameters["runCanary"]) == true}.

Another example is that the status attribute of a stage is actually an enum internally, not a string. To compare the status to a string, you need to call .toString() on the result. For example: ${#stage("Deploy")["status"].toString() == "SUCCEEDED"}.

Functions

The expression language has several built in helper functions that simplify common use cases. The syntax for calling built-in functions is #functionName(params). For example, #fromUrl("http://www.netflix.com"). See the full list of functions here .

Lists

You can also use lists in your expressions. Spinnaker always provides a list called stages, which you can use to access each stage by index: ${execution["stages"][0]} returns the value of the first stage in your pipeline.

Note that stages is mostly referenced here for illustration purposes. The value of stages[i] depends on the order in which your stages execute, which makes it fragile. The recommended way to access a specific stage is to use the <code>#stage("Stage Name")</code> helper function .

Maps

You can use maps to access data from the JSON representation of your pipeline. For example, ${trigger["properties"]["example"]} evaluates to the value of the example trigger property. To see the available values for a given pipeline, view the execution JSON:

  1. Go to an execution of your pipeline.
  2. Click on Details to expand the pipeline.
  3. Click on the source link under the pipeline execution, which opens a new tab containing the JSON details of your pipeline execution. [ screenshot ]

Note that while Spinnaker supports both dot (map.value) and square bracket (map["value"]) notation, we recommend using square brackets. That is, prefer trigger["properties"]["value"] instead of trigger.properties.value. There are a few places where using dot notation produces unexpected results, such as after a filter operation or when getting nested JSON values from an URL. Bracket notation also allows you to access non-alphanumeric properties.

You can filter maps using .?. For example, to filter a list of stages by type, you would use ${execution["stages"].?[type == "bake"]}. The result is a list, and can be accessed as such: ${execution["stages"].?[type == "bake"][0]} returns the first bake stage in your pipeline.

Math

You can use arithmetic operations in your expressions, such as ${trigger["buildInfo"]["number"] * 2}. You can use helper functions such as #toInt or #toFloat if type conversion is necessary.

Strings

Strings evaluate to themselves: ${"This is a String."} becomes “This is a String.”

Helper properties

Helper properties are attribute shortcuts that you can use in Spinnaker. The specific properties are:

  • execution: refers to the current pipeline execution.
  • parameters: refers to pipeline parameters. This is a shortcut for accessing the value of trigger["parameters"].
  • trigger: refers to the pipeline trigger.
  • scmInfo: refers to the git details of either the trigger or the most recently executed Jenkins stage.
    • scmInfo.sha1 returns the git commit hash of the last build
    • scmInfo.branch returns the git branch name of the last build
  • deployedServerGroups: refers to the Server Group that was created by the last deploy stage. It should look something like: {"account":"my-gce-account", "capacity": { "desired":1.0,"max":1.0,"min":1.0}, "region":"us-central1", "serverGroup":"myapp-dev-v005"}. Note that you can use deployedServerGroups as a function to return information about an arbitrary deploy stage.

Helper functions

#alphanumerical(String)

Returns the alphanumerical value of the passed-in string. That is, the input string with all characters aside from A-Z and 0-9 stripped out.

#deployedServerGroups(String)

Takes the name of a deploy stage as an argument and returns the Server Group that was created by the specified stage.

#readJson(String)

Converts a JSON String into a Map that can then be processed further.

#readYaml(String)

Converts a YAML String into a Map that can then be processed further.

#fromUrl(String)

Returns the contents of the specified URL as a String. You can use this to fetch information from unauthenticated URL endpoints.

#jsonFromUrl(String)

Retrieves the contents of the given URL and converts it into either a map or a list. It uses the #fromUrl(String) helper function underneath.

#yamlFromUrl(String)

Retrieves the contents of the given URL and converts it into a map. It uses the #fromUrl(String) helper function underneath.

#judgment(String)

Returns the selected judgment value from the Manual Judgment stage whose name matches the input string. Note that #judgment is case sensitive: ${#judgment("my manual judgment stage")} returns an error if your stage is named “My Manual Judgment Stage”. Note that this function is aliased to the spelling #judgement.

#manifestLabelValue(String stageName, String manifestKind, String labelKey)

Returns the value of a label with key labelKey from a Kubernetes Deployment or ReplicaSet manifest of kind manifestKind, deployed by a stage of type deployManifest and name stageName.

#propertiesFromUrl(String)

Retrieves the contents of a Java properties file at the given URL and converts it into a map. You can use this to fetch information from Jenkins properties files or other similar endpoints.

#stage(String)

A shortcut to get the stage by name. For example, ${#stage("Bake")} allows you to access your Bake stage. Note that #stage is case sensitive: if your stage is actually named “bake”, ${#stage("Bake")} will not find it. Remember that the values for the stage are still under the context map, so you can access a property via ${#stage("Bake")["context"]["desiredProperty"]}.

#stageByRefId(String)

A shortcut to get the stage by its refId. For example, ${#stageByRefId("3")} allows you to access the stage with refId = 3.

#currentStage()

Returns the current stage.

#stageExists(String)

Checks if a given stage exists. You can search by name or id. Returns true if at least one stage is found with the name or id given.
Since the id is generated at runtime, most of the time it will make sense to search by name instead. Note that stage names are set by default so if you create a Webhook stage it will be called Webhook; giving the stage a unique name when you create it makes it easier to find when using this helper function.

#pipelineId(String)

This function looks up the pipeline id given a pipeline name (within the same Spinnaker application). This is useful if you generate pipelines programmatically and don’t want to modify pipelines to reference a new id when a dependent pipeline is automatically regenerated.
For example, ${#pipelineId("Deploy to prod")} might return 9b2395dc-7a2b-4845-b623-838bd74d059b.

#pipelineIdInApplication(String pipelineName, String applicationName)

This function looks up the pipeline id for the given pipeline name and Spinnaker application. This is helpful to retrieve the pipeline id for an existing pipeline within any application in Spinnaker.

#toBoolean(String)

Converts the input string to a boolean.

#toFloat(String)

Converts a value to a floating point number.

#toInt(String)

Converts a value to an integer.

#toJson(Object)

Converts an arbitrary JSON object into a JSON string.

#cfServiceKey(String stageName)

A shortcut to refer to a service key which has been created in a previous stage. Remember that the stage’s name is case-sensitive. Note also that the values for the service key are contained in a map, so one may access a property via ${#cfServiceKey("stageName")["desiredProperty"]}. For example, ${#cfServiceKey("Create MySQL Service Key")["username"]} will retrieve the username field of a service key which has been created for a MySQL service in a Create Service Key stage named “Create MySQL Service Key”.

#triggerResolvedArtifact(String name)

A shortcut to look up the resolved artifact in execution trigger by its name. If multiple artifacts are found, only 1 will be returned. For example, ${#triggerResolvedArtifact("my-image")["reference"]} might return gcr.io/spinnaker-marketplace/orca@sha256:b48dbe7d7cb580db8512e4687d31f3710185b08afcf3cb53c0203025f93f9091.

#triggerResolvedArtifactByType(String type)

A shortcut to look up the resolved artifact in execution trigger by its type. If multiple artifacts are found, only 1 will be returned. For example, ${#triggerResolvedArtifactByType("docker/image")["reference"]} might return gcr.io/spinnaker-marketplace/orca@sha256:b48dbe7d7cb580db8512e4687d31f3710185b08afcf3cb53c0203025f93f9091.

Allowed Java classes

You can find the code which restricts instantiable Java classes here . The allowed classes are:

Source code

Source code for the expression language is in the spinnaker/orca repository , mostly in the following classes:

Pipeline expression implementation

The Pipeline Expression syntax is implemented using the Spring Expression Language (SpEL) .

Last modified May 4, 2021: rest of migration (700781a)