Pull environment variables to the Helm charts

This tutorial guides you on how to pull environment variables to the Helm charts. Helm is a kubernetes package manager and helm charts are the best way to find, share and use software built for kubernetes.

Pull environment variables to the Helm charts

Let’s learn how to include environment variables in your kubernetes deployment YAML configurations.

Before you begin, make sure that you have

Access to the terminal/ command line
Created kubernetes cluster
Installed and configured helm.

Let’s say you wanted to pull the value of username and password from the local environment variables when you run helm install command. Follow the step by step instructions below to use environment variables with helm charts.

1: Value Files / Values is one of the built-in objects in Helm. This object can be used to provide access to environment values passed in to the chart. To pass this values file in to helm install you need to use -f flag and the command should look like helm install -f values.yaml ./mychart

To pass the individual parameters you need to use –set flag ( helm install –set username=$USERNAME ./mychart)

Let’s add the following lines for username and password to the values.yaml file in your helm chart.

values.yaml

username: user
password: password

2: If you don’t wanted to expose the username and password data, then create a new file called secret.yaml under templates folder and add the following contents in that YAML file.

secret.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: {{ .Release.Name }}-auth
data:
  password: {{ .Values.password | b64enc }}
  username: {{ .Values.username | b64enc }}

3: After that, modify your deployment YAML configuration file in the env section as shown below.

deployment.yaml

...
...
      containers:
        - name: my-app
          image: "my-app:latest"
          imagePullPolicy: Always
          env:          
          - name: "USERNAME"
            valueFrom:
              secretKeyRef:
                key:  username
                name: {{ .Release.Name }}-auth
          - name: "PASSWORD"
            valueFrom:
              secretKeyRef:
                key:  password
                name: {{ .Release.Name }}-auth
...
...

4: After modifying the templates, you need to set the environment variables with the desired values using export as shown below.

export USERNAME=normal-user

5: Finally, to use or pull the environment variable to the helm chart, you need to run helm install command with –set flag so that you can pass individual parameter to the helm chart.

$ helm install --set username=$USERNAME ./mychart

If you wanted to run this in dry-run mode without actually installing the helm resource, then run the following command.

$ helm install --dry-run --set username=$USERNAME --debug ./mychart

Example: Use environment variables for helm chart

For example,

$ helm install --dry-run --set username=$USERNAME --debug demo /home/sneppets/demo/hello-helm/k8s/demo/
install.go:173: [debug] Original chart version: ""
install.go:190: [debug] CHART PATH: /home/nithip/demo/hello-helm/k8s/demo

NAME: demo
LAST DEPLOYED: Thu Apr  8 06:22:00 2021
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: pending-install
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
USER-SUPPLIED VALUES:
username: normal-user

COMPUTED VALUES:
container:
  image: cloudnatived/demo
  name: demo
  port: 8888
  tag: hello
environment: development
password: password
replicas: 1
username: normal-user
HOOKS:
MANIFEST:
---
# Source: demo/templates/secret.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: demo-auth
data:
  password: cGFzc3dvcmQ=
  username: bm9ybWFsLXVzZXI=
---
# Source: demo/templates/service.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: demo-service
  labels:
    app: demo
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 8888
  selector:
    app: demo
  type: LoadBalancer
---
# Source: demo/templates/deployment.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: demo
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: demo
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: demo
        environment: development
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: demo
          image: cloudnatived/demo:hello
          ports:
            - containerPort: 8888
          env:
            - name: environment
              value: development
            - name: "USERNAME"
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  key:  username
                  name: demo-auth
            - name: "PASSWORD"
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  key:  password
                  name: demo-auth

From the above response you can see that, username has been set to “normal-user” under USER–SUPPLIED VALUES and COMPUTED VALUES. Also check the username and password values being pulled from Values file to the helm chart.

That’s it you had learnt how to use or pull environment variables forhelm chart.

Hope it helped 🙂

Pull environment variables to the Helm charts

Pull environment variables to the Helm charts

Example: Use environment variables for helm chart

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References