powershell: automatic version bumps with json parsing

I’m working on a project where it’s convenient to publish a new package of the project on every build. In order to facilitate the workflow, my first step was to create a powershell script that incremented the patch on each build:

$buildNumber = %build.number%
$json = (Get-Content ./package.json | ConvertFrom-Json)

$currentValue = $json.version

$patch = $currentValue.LastIndexOf(".")

$newValue = $currentValue.Substring(0,$patch) + "." + $buildNumber

Write-Host "Previous Version: " + $currentValue
Write-Host "New Version: " $newValue

$json.version = $newValue
$json | ConvertTo-Json | Set-Content "./package.json"

The quick review of what this Powershell script is doing:

1. Parse the version from the package.json in the project,
2. Set the patch version to the buildNumber
3. Update the version key on the json
4. Write the json back to package.json.

This works pretty well. However, I wanted to go one step further and make a minor version bump on every merge to main. This would protect me from the major concern exposed by my current approach - consumers of the library had no way of knowing whether the version they were using was safe or not. By auto-incrementing minor on each merge, I could communicate that the change was actually accepted and merged rather than just a temporary branch as part of the development process.

In order to do this, I needed to learn a few things:

1. The Substring API takes two arguments: the start and the length of the string. Notably this is not the start and end index, which was my initial supposition.
2. To increment a string, you can cast it with the [int] prefix.

$branch = %branch.name%
$buildNumber = %build.number%
$json = (Get-Content ./package.json | ConvertFrom-Json)

$currentValue = $json.version
$length = $currentValue.length
$minorDot = $currentValue.IndexOf(".")
$patchDot = $currentValue.LastIndexOf(".")
$currentMajor = $currentValue.Substring(0, $minorDot)
$currentMinor = [int]$currentValue.Substring($minorDot +1, $patchDot - $minorDot -1)
$currentPatch = $currentValue.Substring($patchDot +1, $length - $patchDot -1)
$newMinor = If ($branch -like "main") {$currentMinor +1} Else {$currentMinor}
$newValue = $currentMajor + "." + $newMinor + "." + $buildNumber

Write-Host "Previous Version: " + $currentValue
Write-Host "New Version: " $newValue

$json.version = $newValue
$json | ConvertTo-Json | Set-Content "./package.json"

And like that! I now have a dynamic solution that will update my version based on the branch! I love learning new things!