newline characters are not printed out as newlines when binary text output is used in an OutputTemplate

[reubenmiller]

There seems to be some encoding issues when handing non-json text output inside an output template.

When an output template is not used, the following writes to the console with literal newlines (not the \n character).

 c8y events list --type c8y-configuration-plugin \
| c8y events downloadBinary --noProgress --outputTemplate "response.body"

Output

# Add the configurations to be managed by c8y-configuration-plugin
files = [
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/tedge.toml' },
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/mosquitto-conf/c8y-bridge.conf', type = 'c8y-bridge.conf' },
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/mosquitto-conf/tedge-mosquitto.conf', type = 'tedge-mosquitto.conf' },
#    { path = '/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf', type = 'mosquitto.conf' },
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/c8y/example.txt', type = 'example', user = 'tedge', group = 'tedge', mode = 0o444 }
]

However when using a custom output template which should do the same thing,

c8y events list -p 1 --type c8y-configuration-plugin \
| c8y events downloadBinary --noProgress --outputTemplate "response.body"

Output

# Add the configurations to be managed by c8y-configuration-plugin\nfiles = [\n#    { path = '/etc/tedge/tedge.toml' },\n#    { path = '/etc/tedge/mosquitto-conf/c8y-bridge.conf', type = 'c8y-bridge.conf' },\n#    { path = '/etc/tedge/mosquitto-conf/tedge-mosquitto.conf', type = 'tedge-mosquitto.conf' },\n#    { path = '/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf', type = 'mosquitto.conf' },\n#    { path = '/etc/tedge/c8y/example.txt', type = 'example', user = 'tedge', group = 'tedge', mode = 0o444 }\n]

Workaround

You can use sed to do the replacement of \n with a literal newline:

c8y events list -p 1 --type c8y-configuration-plugin \
| c8y events downloadBinary --noProgress --outputTemplate "'\n\n# Device: ' + request.url + '\n' + output + '\n'" \
| sed 's|\\n|\n|g'

Output

# Device: https://example.c8y.io/event/events/3505464/binaries
# Add the configurations to be managed by c8y-configuration-plugin
files = [
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/tedge.toml' },
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/mosquitto-conf/c8y-bridge.conf', type = 'c8y-bridge.conf' },
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/mosquitto-conf/tedge-mosquitto.conf', type = 'tedge-mosquitto.conf' },
#    { path = '/etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf', type = 'mosquitto.conf' },
#    { path = '/etc/tedge/c8y/example.txt', type = 'example', user = 'tedge', group = 'tedge', mode = 0o444 }
]