Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying out Bicep as a replacement for ARM templates for a mini side project to replace the TFN generator people are currently using on this site. These are a few of the small issues I’ve hit while working with it.

Unable to Parse Parameter

One of the steps on the main tutorial gets you to use a parameters file to make the deployment generic (similar to Terraform). Unfortunately, I started getting the following error:

Unable to parse parameter: azuredeploy.parameters.dev.json

I mistakenly thought that this we referring to the format of the parameter itself. However, in my case it simply meant that it was unable to locate the parameters file. If you’re getting the same error double check the file path and ensure that it’s accessible from the location you’re executing the deployment.

Template parameter JToken type is not valid. Expected ‘Boolean’. Actual ‘String’

This one is pretty straight forward – check the value you’re providing for your parameter. If it’s meant to a boolean ensure that you haven’t accidentally added quotes around it.

// Incorrect
"globalRedundancy": {
    "value": "false"
 }

// Correct
"globalRedundancy": {
    "value": false
 }

Decompilation failed with fatal error “Failed to read file:///C:/bicip….

When attempting to decompile an arm template with a non-json extension I received the following error:

PS E:\repos\bicep> az bicep decompile --files postgresmql.arm
accurate conversion is not possible.
If you would like to report any issues or inaccurate conversions, please see https://github.com/Azure/bicep/issues.
E:\repos\bicep\postgresmql.arm: Decompilation failed with fatal error "Failed to read file:///E:/repos/bicep/postgresmql.json"

The decompile command appears to force a .json extension and automatically renames the argument. The only way around it so far seems to be to rename your file. See the following github issue for more info: https://github.com/Azure/bicep/issues/1912

Thanks,

Chris