Automation for Jira - Set issue property writes the value as a string Edited

[Simon Herd]

Update: There are two issues. One is being unable to write a JSON object using the set entity property. The other is that you cannot retrieve the entity property as a JSON object, it is returned as a string see AUT-1696.

We are attempting to copy an entity property from a parent issue to a subtask. Everything is working as expected; however, when we use the Set issue property it writes the values as a string and adds quotation marks around the json we are adding, which makes the JSON invalid. 

Is this a bug or is there some work around?

The automation rule we have created is:

The result is this

[Martin Cleaver]

Simon - yes, I've been telling Atlassian that A4J's JSON handling is broken.

I assume you didn't find a solution (?)

Did you email support? We can't vote on issues on the old codebarrel site, so at least this adds context and pressure on them.

[Darryl Lee]

Hey all - has anybody tried this lately?

As recently as last week, I was able to "extract" values out of a project property that looked like this:

{
   "engineering-approver-primary": "someaccountid",
   "engineering-approver-secondary": "someotheracccountid",
   "build-approver-primary": "thisaccountid",
   "build-approver-secondary": "thataccountid"
}

My trick was using a web request to get the data out, and into {{webhookResponse.body}}, where I was then able to use {{webhookResponse.body.value.engineering-approver-primary}} to update a User field.

I had to use a web request because there is no way to currently reference (evaluate/nest) a smart value within a smart value.

Like, I ideally I'd be able to simple update a field by doing:

{{project.property.{{issue.component.value}}.value.engineering-approver-primary}}

But that's not a valid Smart Value.

[Darryl Lee]

Oh, but to Simon's original message, it seems like I *was* able to write a valid JSON object using the set entity property. At least it was valid enough for it to be properly parsed as a {{webhookResponse.body}}.

I set the Property value above using this code:

{
   "engineering-approver-primary": "{{issue.Engineering Approver Primary.accountId}}",
   "engineering-approver-secondary": "{{issue.Engineering Approver Secondary.accountId}}",
   "build-approver-primary": "{{issue.Build Approver Primary.accountId}}",
   "build-approver-secondary": "{{issue.Build Approver Secondary.accountId}}"
}

[Darryl Lee]

So I'm guessing for you, @Simon Herd, it's the {{issue.parent.properties."proforma.forms"}} that's introducing the extraneous quotation marks.

I think Automation could really use the inverse (converse?) of the asJsonString function.

> stringAsJson or something would attempt to parse a string into a JSON object.

Or they could just recognize a JSON object and return it appropriately. :-P