[BUG] Local execution and Azure execution have different formats for nested init values

[jomalsan]

Describe the bug When passing a complex object in the init parameters of a flex flow, the type passed to the class is different on local machine (pf run create) and in Azure (pfazure run create).

How To Reproduce the bug Steps to reproduce the behavior, how frequent can you experience the bug:

1. Create a flex flow class with an init method that takes a dictionary as an input value. The following will raise an exception with the type of the argument.

class Flow:
    def __init__(
        self,
        string_parameter: str,
        dict_parameter={},
    ):
        # NOTE: I am using an exception to easily output data at the flow level
        raise Exception(f"Type of string_parameter: {type(string_parameter)}\nType of dict_parameter: {type(dict_parameter)}")

2. Define a run.yml file with init values for both of the parameters as follows:

init:
  string_parameter: "hello world"
  dict_parameter:
    foo: "bar"

3. Run it locally pf run create -f <run_yaml_file>.yml and get the following exception: First error message is: Failed to initialize flow entry with '{'string_parameter': 'hello world', 'dict_parameter': {'foo': 'bar'}}', ex:'Type of string_parameter: <class 'str'>\nType of dict_parameter: <class 'ruamel.yaml.comments.CommentedMap'>."
4. Run it in azure with pfazure run crate -f <run_yaml_file>.yml and get the following exception: First error message is: Failed to initialize flow entry with '{'string_parameter': 'hello world', 'dict_parameter': {'foo': 'bar'}}', ex:'Type of string_parameter: <class 'str'>\nType of dict_parameter: <class 'str'>."

For the local run, type(dict_parameter)==<class 'ruamel.yaml.comments.CommentedMap'>, while for the run in Azure type(dict_parameter)==<class 'str'>.

In azure the value of dict_parameter is a string serialized python dictionary. In order to parse this, you need to replace ' with " and then json deserialize it, like follows:

if type(dict_parameter) is str:
    # convert a str(dict) to a json string
    dict_parameter = dict_parameter.replace("'", '"')
    dict_parameter = json.loads(dict_parameter)

Expected behavior I would suspect both environments to parse and pass their configuration values the same way. It is a lot easier to handle code wise to have it passed as a dictionary (or yaml commented map). This is how local works and I would suspect Azure version to work the same.

Running Information

macOS 14.6.1 (23G93)

{
  "promptflow": "1.13.0",
  "promptflow-azure": "1.13.0",
  "promptflow-core": "1.13.0",
  "promptflow-devkit": "1.13.0",
  "promptflow-tracing": "1.13.0"
}

Executable '/**/.venv/bin/python3.11'
Python (Darwin) 3.11.4 (v3.11.4:d2340ef257, Jun  6 2023, 19:15:51) [Clang 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.30)]