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Placeholder Values

placeholder:// values are experimental. They are intended for Git deployments where a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline replaces markers in generated files before deployment. The pattern generator removes every placeholder:// prefix and preserves the remaining text unchanged. It does not resolve or replace the marker.

These enhancements are available in nevisAdmin 4 Patterns version >= 9.2605.4 in the RR line and >= 8.2607.2 in the LTS26 line.

The syntax is:

placeholder://<marker-name>

The marker name may contain only ASCII letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens. For example:

placeholder://WASL_DOMAIN
placeholder://@@WASL_DOMAIN@@

The @@ characters are optional delimiters for making markers easy to identify; they are not part of the marker name. Bare markers may occur inside a larger scalar and end at the first character outside the marker-name character set:

https://login.placeholder://tenant-prod.example

The marker in this example is tenant-prod; .example remains unchanged. A scalar can contain multiple markers:

placeholder://@@ALLOWED_IP_RANGE_1_FROM@@ - placeholder://@@ALLOWED_IP_RANGE_1_TO@@

Do not put Helm, Kustomize, Jsonnet, Argo CD, shell, or other deployment-tool template expressions inside a marker. For example, this is not supported:

placeholder://{{ .Values.domain }}

Do not use a complete unresolved URL as a placeholder:

placeholder://https://login.example/issuer

nevisAdmin 4 does not interpret the marker or know which CI/CD tool will process the generated files. The CI/CD pipeline is responsible for replacing the remaining marker before deployment. The replacement must preserve the generated configuration syntax and structure.

Use placeholders only where the setting accepts a scalar value and the pattern can generate its configuration without interpreting the marker. If a pattern validates, parses, or uses the value to choose a generation branch, such as a dropdown or other selection that produces different configuration, a placeholder cannot be used. A placeholder represents one scalar or one sequence item; it does not expand into multiple items, a sequence, a map, or another structured value.