Use task definition parameters to pass environment variables to a container - Amazon Elastic Container Service
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Use task definition parameters to pass environment variables to a container

Important

We recommend storing your sensitive data in either Amazon Secrets Manager secrets or Amazon Systems Manager Parameter Store parameters. For more information, see Passing sensitive data to an Amazon ECS container.

Environment variables specified in the task definition are readable by all users and roles that are allowed the DescribeTaskDefinition action for the task definition.

You can pass environment variables to your containers in the following ways:

  • Individually using the environment container definition parameter. This maps to the --env option to docker run.

  • In bulk, using the environmentFiles container definition parameter to list one or more files that contain the environment variables. The file must be hosted in Amazon S3. This maps to the --env-file option to docker run.

The following is a snippet of a task definition showing how to specify individual environment variables.

{
    "family": "",
    "containerDefinitions": [
        {
            "name": "",
            "image": "",
            ...
            "environment": [
                {
                    "name": "variable",
                    "value": "value"
                }
            ],
            ...
        }
    ],
    ...
}