Value returned from a script does not assigned to a variable declared in jenkins declarative pipeline stage

Question

I am working on adding a jenkins Declarative pipeline for automation testing. In the test run stage i want to extract the failed tests from the log. i am using a groovy function for extracting the test result. this function is not a part of the jenkins pipeline. It is another script file. The function works fine and it build a string containing the failure details. Inside a pipeline stage i am calling this function and assinging the returned string to another variable. But when i echo the variable value it prints empty string.

pipeline {
    agent {
        kubernetes {
            yamlFile 'kubernetesPod.yml'
        }
    }
    environment{
        failure_msg = ""
    }
    stages {
        stage('Run Test') {
            steps {
                container('ansible') {
                    script {
                        def notify = load('src/TestResult.groovy')
                        def result = notify.extractTestResult("${WORKSPACE}/testreport.xml")
                        sh "${result}"
                        if (result != "") {
                            failure_msg = failure_msg + result
                        }
                    }

                }  
            }
        }
    post {
        always {
            script {
                sh 'echo Failure message.............${failure_msg}'
                }
        }
    }
}

here 'sh 'echo ${result}'' print empty string. But 'extractTestResult()' returns a non-empty string.

Also i am not able to use the environment variable 'failure_msg' in post section it return an error 'groovy.lang.MissingPropertyException: No such property: failure_msg for class: groovy.lang.Binding'

can anyone please help me with this ?

EDIT:

Even after i fixed the string interpolation, i was getting the same error. That was because jenkins does not allow using 'sh' inside docker container. there is an open bug ticket in jenkins issue board

Can you please try if your issue disappears if you use the correct string interpolation (https://jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/jenkinsfile/#string-interpolation) on your sh-command. Try: sh "${failure_msg}" — Michael Kemmerzell, Nov 21 '19 at 10:14
Another issue could be that the variable does not exist in the post-stage-scope because it was declared in the scope of the steps-block. — Michael Kemmerzell, Nov 21 '19 at 10:16
Agree with @mkemmerz. It's the incorrect string interpolation. In addition, `failure_msg` here is not being set as an environment variable, but Groovy global variable. The difference is that environment variables (`env.failure_msg`) are available to the sub shells called by the pipeline script whereas Groovy global variables are not. On using double quotes with `sh`, it is Groovy that interpolates the variable and not shell. — Dibakar Aditya, Nov 21 '19 at 10:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 21 '19 at 10:25

I would suggest to use a global variable for holding the error message. My guess is that the variable is not existing in your scope.

def FAILURE_MSG // Global Variable

pipeline {
    ...
    stages {
        stage(...
            steps {
                container('ansible') {
                    script {
                        ...
                        if (result != "") {
                            FAILURE_MSG = FAILURE_MSG + result
                        }
                    }    
                }  
            }
        }
    post {
        always {
            script {
                sh "${FAILURE_MSG}" // Hint: Use correct String Interpolation
                }
        }
    }
}

(Similar SO question can be found here)

Value returned from a script does not assigned to a variable declared in jenkins declarative pipeline stage

1 Answers1

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