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Release Management–Releases failing with Error: (404) Not Found.

  • Article

Recently one of the customer reported that the releases are failing with following stack trace. Essentially releases were failing while sending email notifications to the release step approvers.

Message: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.: \r\n\r\n

at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Data.WebRequest.PlatformHttpClient.EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Data.WebRequest.RestClientResponseRetriever.EndGetAsyncMemoryStreamFromResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult, IPlatformHttpClient platformHttpClient)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Data.WebRequest.RestClientResponseRetriever.EndDownloadString(IAsyncResult asyncResult, IPlatformHttpClient platformHttpClient)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Data.WebRequest.RestClient.EndPost(IAsyncResult asyncResult)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Data.Proxy.RestProxy.HttpRequestor.<>c__DisplayClass1.<GetPostCaller>b__0(String url, String body)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Data.Proxy.RestProxy.BaseNotificationServiceProxy.SendNotification(Int32 releaseId, String releaseName, String applicationVersionName, String stageTypeName, String environmentName, Int32 releaseStepId, Int32 releaseStepTypeId, Boolean releaseStepIsAutomated)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Workflow.Services.ReleaseWorkflowService.CreateNextReleaseStep(Release release, Stage stage, StageStep stageStep, Int32 releaseStageRank, Int32 trialNumber)

at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Release.Workflow.Services.ReleaseWorkflowService.Initiate(Release release)

at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Release.ViewModel.ViewModels.ReleaseViewModel.<StartRelease>b__85(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs args)

at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Release.ViewModel.ViewModels.ReleaseViewModel.PerformActionAndRefresh(DoWorkEventHandler action, Boolean selectViewEditorBasedOnReleaseStatus)

at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Release.ViewModel.ViewModels.ReleaseViewModel.StartRelease()

 

It turned out to be the releases were failing because the release name contained special character ‘#’ due to which POST Call URL was getting truncated after ‘#’ char. By URL specifications, “#” is a reference to the start of the current document. Thus, the character "#" should be excluded in that are passed in the URL because it is used to delimit a URI from a fragment identifier in URI.

 

For Example, let say release name is “My Release #1”. While constructing SendNotification(Email notifications to the step approver) POST Call we expect below URL

POST  https://rmserver:1000/account/releaseManagementService/_apis/releaseManagement/NotificationService/SendNotification?releaseId=1&releaseName=My%20Release%20 # 1&applicationVersionName=ReleaseTemplate1&stageTypeName=Stage1&environmentName=Environment1&StepId=1&releaseStepTypeId=1&releaseStepIsAutomated=True

But due to special meaning of ‘#’ character, URL is truncated and below invalid POST call is made for SendNotification service.

POST  https://rmserver:1000/account/releaseManagementService/_apis/releaseManagement/NotificationService/SendNotification?releaseId=1&releaseName=My%20Release%20 

 

  • The above issue will occur if if any of the artifacts like ReleaseName, ReleaseTemplateName, StageTypeName or EnvironmentName contains special characters like ‘#’.
  • The workaround for now is please refrain from using special characters like ‘#’ in any of the artifacts like Release Name, Release Template Name, Stage Name, Environment name etc. till this gets fixed in the future release of the Release Management product.

 

Thank You.