AWS Secrets

Prerequisites

  • You will need AWS command line installed.

  • You have jq installed.

    • brew install jq

  • You will also need access to the AWS account. Ask someone from DevOps to send you an invitation.

Getting started

Using AWS SSO

Using SSO is the most straight forward solution. You won't need to go by yourself on your AWS account and it will open the needed url for you.

  • Run the sso command for the first time

In recent aws-cli version it started to ask for SSO session name. Currently island.is accounts doesn't support that and depends on configuring it with the legacy format. So it's important to press Enter without specifing any value in the SSO session name (Recommended): question

aws configure sso

# Press enter without specifing any value for the first question
SSO session name (Recommended):
WARNING: Configuring using legacy format (e.g. without an SSO session).
Consider re-running "configure sso" command and providing a session name.
SSO start URL [None]: https://island-is.awsapps.com/start
SSO Region [None]: eu-west-1

Then choose the environment of your choice. Likely to be island-is-development01. You will be prompted for the following:

CLI default client Region [eu-west-1]: <Press Enter>
CLI default output format [json]: <Press Enter>
CLI profile name [AWSPowerUserAccess-X]: <Custom name (e.g. islandis-dev)> or <Press Enter>

This step will add the new profile to your ~/.aws/config file. If you choose islandis-dev as profile's name, you will see [profile islandis-dev] in there.

  • Ready to use

You can now pass your profile to the get-secrets script.

AWS_PROFILE=<profile-name> yarn get-secrets <project-name> # e.g. profile-name -> islandis-dev as seen above

Using AWS session

This method is more manual where you will need to export environments variables or change a file by yourself.

You will need to go to your AWS account and get the required credentials for the account you need.

  • Option 1: Set environment variables

You can copy/paste these environment variables to your terminal:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID_EXAMPLE
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_EXAMPLE
export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=AWS_SESSION_TOKEN_EXAMPLE
  • Option 2: Edit ~/.aws/credentials

Copy/paste the values in the ~/.aws/credentials file.

[default]
aws_access_key_id = <KEY_ID>
aws_secret_access_key = <ACCESS_KEY>
aws_session_token = <SESSION_TOKEN>
  • Ready to use

In this case you won't need to pass a profile name as opposed to the SSO method.

yarn get-secrets <project-name>

Usage to fetch secrets

You should now be able to fetch secrets for the project you need.

With SSO

AWS_PROFILE=<profile-name> yarn get-secrets <project> [options]

Without SSO

yarn get-secrets <project> [options]

Example:

yarn get-secrets api

You can verify it by opening the .env.secret file at the root, or inside your code using for example:

const { MY_SECRET_KEY } = process.env

You can also add the --reset argument to the command, that will reset the .env.secret file.

Troubleshoot

If you get the following error message, you will need to refresh your credentials as explained above.

An error occurred (ExpiredTokenException) when calling the GetParametersByPath operation: The security token included in the request is expired

Usage to create secrets

You can run the following command and will be prompted for input.

With SSO

AWS_PROFILE=<profile-name> create-secret

Without SSO

yarn create-secret

Only alphanumeric characters, / and - are allowed. The length of the secret name should be from 6-128 characters long.

You will be asked for a secret name that will be added to the /k8s/ secrets namespace, a secret value and the secret type (SecureString or String).

Example

➜ yarn create-secret

Secret name: /k8s/my-app/MY_APP_KEY
# Name: Ok!
# Length: Ok!

Secret value: a-very-secure-secret
# Length: Ok!

SecureString [Y/n]? # [enter] for SecureString
# SecureString selected

Add tags? [y/N]? # [enter] to skip creating tags

Example: Key=Foo,Value=Bar Key=Another,Value=Tag: # note: Key and Value are case sensitive! Create multiple tags by separating with whitespace.

Are you sure [Y/n]? # [enter] to confirm
# Creating secret....

Finalizing creating secrets

In order to use the secrets in your app you need to add it to its infra configuration.

  1. Add the new secret to your-app/infra/your-app.ts

  2. Generate helm charts for your app with

yarn charts islandis
  1. Follow the documentation on Config Module

Making dev secrets available locally

Environment variables that should not be tracked but needed locally should be added to the .env.secret file. (NOTE: Each variable must be prefixed with export for direnv to pick them up.)

Additionally, you can fetch secrets configured in a project's infra DSL from the island-is-development01 AWS Parameter Store. Just run yarn get-secrets <project> and they'll be loaded into your .env.secret file.

Environment variables with static websites

More about it on the root README.

Running proxy against development service

More about it on the root README

Last updated

Was this helpful?