Error "Invalid template" parsing .env file

[alejgr]

• I have tried with the latest version of Docker Desktop
• I have tried disabling enabled experimental features
• I have uploaded Diagnostics
• Diagnostics ID: 795F330D-B823-4025-9550-703A3E38857E/20220812105351

Expected behavior

docker compose works as expected

Actual behavior

Error:
Invalid template: "^https?://(localhost|127\\.0\\.0\\.1)(:[0-9]+)?$"

Information

• macOS Version: Monterey 12.5
• Intel chip or Apple chip: Apple chip (M1)
• Docker Desktop Version: 4.11.1

Output of /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/com.docker.diagnose check

Starting diagnostics

[PASS] DD0027: is there available disk space on the host?
[PASS] DD0028: is there available VM disk space?
[PASS] DD0031: does the Docker API work?
[PASS] DD0004: is the Docker engine running?
[PASS] DD0011: are the LinuxKit services running?
[PASS] DD0016: is the LinuxKit VM running?
[PASS] DD0001: is the application running?
[PASS] DD0018: does the host support virtualization?
[PASS] DD0017: can a VM be started?
[PASS] DD0015: are the binary symlinks installed?
[PASS] DD0003: is the Docker CLI working?
[PASS] DD0013: is the $PATH ok?
[PASS] DD0007: is the backend responding?
[PASS] DD0014: are the backend processes running?
[PASS] DD0008: is the native API responding?
[PASS] DD0009: is the vpnkit API responding?
[PASS] DD0010: is the Docker API proxy responding?
[PASS] DD0012: is the VM networking working?
[PASS] DD0032: do Docker networks overlap with host IPs?
[SKIP] DD0030: is the image access management authorized?
[PASS] DD0019: is the com.docker.vmnetd process responding?
[PASS] DD0033: does the host have Internet access?
No fatal errors detected.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

I am using a sample docker-compose file like this:

services:
  hello:
    container_name: hello-world
    image: hello-world

Also I have this .env file in the same directory:

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN=^https?://(localhost|127\.0\.0\.1)(:[0-9]+)?$

As you can see, .env file is not used in docker-compose.yaml, but when I run any docker compose command, the error above is thrown.

.env file is used by another application. If I rewrite it as follows (two $ at the end), then it works for docker compose, but this is not the correct value I want to have.

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN=^https?://(localhost|127\.0\.0\.1)(:[0-9]+)?$$

Why is docker-compose forcing me to change this .env file?

[alejgr]

With legacy docker-compose it is working

$ docker-compose version

docker-compose version 1.29.2, build 5becea4c
docker-py version: 5.0.0
CPython version: 3.9.0
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1h  22 Sep 2020

[nicks]

This is more of a compose issue, so I'm going to transfer it over to the compose repo to make sure they see it.

[bwrgiraud]

I suspect this change was introduced in the following PR: compose-spec/compose-go#276

It seems that escaping the $ in a regex with \ resolves the issue, though it may cause issues with some tool chains.

E.g.:

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN="^https?://(localhost|127\.0\.0\.1)(:[0-9]+)?$"

will work if converted to:

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN="^https?://(localhost|127\.0\.0\.1)(:[0-9]+)?\$"

(I'm not sure if the " are required; I'll leave that question to others. I use them in my .env file and it works with both phpDotEnv and Docker Compose.

[ayyouboulidi]

I am facing the same problem.

Before, this was working:

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN=^https?://(localhost|127\.0\.0\.1)(:[0-9]+)?$ (even without the " @bwrgiraud )

Now the only thing working is escaping the $ with a \ and adding " to the string in the .env file like this:

CORS_ALLOW_ORIGIN="^https?://(localhost|127\.0\.0\.1)(:[0-9]+)?\$"

[havekes]

I am facing the same issue with a password variable in my .env which contains a $ sign like so : PASSWORD="[...]$[...]".
Had to downgrade to compose 2.6 (docker desktop 4.10.1)

[danielporto]

Got the same issue, noticed different behavior in mac and linux.
It works for mac, it does not in linux. Same docker version and compose version and files.

[jonaskello]

I have the same issue with Docker Desktop 4.11.1 on Windows:

❯ docker compose up -d
Invalid template: "{\"dev\": \"^(all|jonas)$\"}"

My .env file has this line, if I comment it out with # prefix it works:

LOG_FILTER={"dev": "^(all|jonas)$"}

The .env file is unrelated to docker, it just happens to be in the same directory.

[danielporto]

The workaround is using single quotes.
It wont work with variables, of course. But at least the hashes are now read correctly with docker compose config.

[NaeemKhan14]

I am passing secret_key as a variable in .env file. Yesterday it was working fine, today it has started giving me Invalid template error. I did not update or change anything.

[milas]

This is fixed in v2.11.2, which has a more flexible parser and won't return errors in this situation anymore.