Changed behaviour between 2.1.1 and 2.2 in dictionary variables

[sandroden]

I have a template that has this cookiecutter.json:

 "pg_ports": {"port_list": [] },

I'm using cookiecutter from python scripts and send values as extra_context as:

extra_context = {
    ....
    'pg_ports':` {'port_list': ['5452:5432']},
}

It worked as expected in 2.1.1 and stopped working in 2.2+
the error I get is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/local/scripts/jmb", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('jmb.tools', 'console_scripts', 'jmb')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/core.py", line 764, in __call__
    return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/core.py", line 717, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/core.py", line 1137, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/core.py", line 1137, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/core.py", line 956, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/core.py", line 555, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/click/decorators.py", line 17, in new_func
    return f(get_current_context(), *args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/misc/src/hg/thunder/jmb2/jmb-tools3/jmb/tools/conf/docker.py", line 120, in compose_from_yaml
    cookiecutter(url, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/cookiecutter/main.py", line 128, in cookiecutter
    extra_context=extra_context,
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/cookiecutter/generate.py", line 130, in generate_context
    apply_overwrites_to_context(obj, extra_context)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/cookiecutter/generate.py", line 82, in apply_overwrites_to_context
    apply_overwrites_to_context(context_value, overwrite)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/cookiecutter/generate.py", line 64, in apply_overwrites_to_context
    f"{overwrite} provided for multi-choice variable {variable}, "
ValueError: ['5452:5432'] provided for multi-choice variable port_list, but valid choices are []

I'm working in Linux with python3.7, to 3.10

It seems to me that cookiecutter wrongly interprets the index in the value of the dictionary variable as a choice list, that is not.

If I understand correctly the docs "The dictionary values can, themselves, be other dictionaries and lists - the data structure can be as deep as you need.", it should not be interpreted as a list.

Please let me know if I'm wrong and in fact what I want to obtain should be done differently.

[sandroden]

It seems that using "" instead of [] is accepted.

"pg_ports": {"port_list": "" },

I can't read this in the docs...
Which is the intended syntax?

[david-abn]

It is returning False on this condition

if set(overwrite).issubset(set(context_value))

where overwrite is the value you provide ['5452:5432'], and context_value is inside cookiecutter.json, an empty list []

If you modify cookiecutter.json to include '5452:5432' as an element, it should work

This is new logic added 3 months ago in 6badb2e

[sandroden]

I set the possible values in choice variable, but when using dictionary variables I'm free to use whatever I want "The dictionary values can, themselves, be other dictionaries and lists - the data structure can be as deep as you need."
Are you saying that the now you are forced to use choice values even in nested values of a dict variable?
If that's the desired behaviour it should be stated in a clearer way in my opinion.

My workaround was to use an empty string as default and it seems to work, at least when using it from python in a non-interactive mode.