Generate and validate default parameter file

[WhitWaldo]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I found it odd that for software that generates whole ARM templates, the documentation indicates I have to write my own parameter file by hand and that there's no built-in validator (given that Bicep contains all the metadata used for parameter field validation.

Describe the solution you'd like
I'd like to request a flag that generates a basic parameter file for the build complete with the default values for each parameter and a validation tool that lets me provide a template parameter file at build that Bicep can validate the values of.

[brwilkinson]

you can install the ARM VSCode extension.

select file type as

Then use snippets.

it will provide this...

Then you can continue with snippets to create individual params

Switch the param file back to JSON language (e.g. F1, language, select)

There could be an easier way...

related to this: #3381

There is a thread on having the ability to have native Bicep param file format, I will link it if I find it.

[brwilkinson]

found it: #399

[matsest]

Would be nice to have #3381 solved to have this natively in the extension, but to add on @brwilkinson's comment it's also possible to use the following workaround to avoid manually entering the values

1. Build Bicep File (with cli or vs code)
2. Right click on generated template json file and choose Generate ARM template parameter file
3. Delete the generated template json file

If you're a Powershell user I would also recommend the New-BicepParameterFile cmdlet from the PSBicep module that does something similar in one command.

New-BicepParameterFile [-Path] <String> [-Parameters <String>] [[-OutputDirectory] <String>] [-WhatIf]
 [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

[WhitWaldo]

I'd like to see exactly the functionality described by @matsest in the Bicep CLI and included as another output of the build step (though ideally it wouldn't be a blanket overwrite so much as:

• If new parameters exist in the output, they're added to the parameter file
• If parameters have been removed, they're either removed from the parameter file or commented out (maybe put this on a flag to more easily consume in CI/CD vs local manual deployments)
• If the type of a parameter has changed, comment out the older value and insert the new type shape (again, flaggable, for easier downstream usage)

Especially from a CI/CD standpoint, having a generated parameters file with the names, types and default values would simplify automatically populating the file as opposed to building it outright and having to read the template to extract out these values itself.

[alex-frankel]

Closing as dup of #512. It would be a great community contribution if anyone has time for it ;)