Bicep Support in Data Factory and Logic App Editors

[JFolberth]

Out of curiosity wanted to open a discussion on thoughts or methods on how additional Azure editors like Data Factory and Logic Apps would integrate with bicep?

Today the editor's produce ARM Templates but more I think about this feel that bicep could make development in these platforms easier. In fact, much easier when we start thinking about reusability of modules.

The downside of not including bicep would mean lack of adoption within those communities as well as emphasis on understanding ARM (Not a bad thing just a call out)

No idea if this is on those associated product teams roadmaps but feels like an opportunity.

[alex-frankel]

Both data factory and logic apps have their own runtimes with their parameters, expression evaluation, etc. - is that right?

I think like with policyDefinitions, it's difficult to navigate multiple runtimes in a single language. Not saying this is not a worthy discussion to have, but that is my understanding of why this is a challenging one to get right.

[brwilkinson]

Hi @JFolberth just an update, we now have docs on the usage of loadTextContext(), which may be useful for some of these resource types.

i.e. you can specify the descriptions in external json files then read them into Bicep directly

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/bicep/patterns-shared-variable-file

I know you were asking about having the Bicep Syntax for those other providers, perhaps/hopefully that is something that may come with time.

I might mark this as answered for now? Since there is no direct support for this request at this stage.

[JFolberth]

Thanks! Yeah I saw the announcement and want to give it a try. I mean it's limitation I'm assuming outside of bicep since it's an issue with every IaC provider so feel free to as a workaround.

[brwilkinson]

I am 'hoping' that the Bicep format becomes a common data format, so that we could also use it for the parameter files.

Yes definitely outside of Bicep in those cases of being data formats for other provider types.

• There are some extensions in place via Bicep for AKS and Azure AD at the moment, which have been discussed on the recent community calls.

I would say once they are proven and after Bicep goes 1.0 it's possible it may continue to grow in adoption into other providers Etc.

[brwilkinson]

here is the link to the community call on extensibility (from July) https://youtu.be/sG2YjaCIAmg?t=1415 timestamped to the topic.

here is the extensibility discussion/proposal #3565