Is there a way to export an AWS CLI Profile to Environment Variables?

Question

When working with certain third-party tools like Terraform, it\'s not easily possible to specify an AWS CLI profile, and I like working with the environment variables better

Answer 1

For sts assume role case, based on Frederic's idea, I figured out a workable shell script as followings:

aws-env.sh:

#!/bin/bash
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$(aws configure get default.aws_access_key_id)
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(aws configure get default.aws_secret_access_key)
export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=$(aws configure get default.aws_session_token)

echo AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
echo AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
echo AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=$AWS_SESSION_TOKEN

bash -i

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

For Zsh:

function aws-env {
    emulate -LR zsh
    profile=${1:-default}
    if [[ ${profile} == clear ]]; then
        unset AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
        unset AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
        unset AWS_SESSION_TOKEN
        unset AWS_SECRET_KEY
    else
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="$(aws configure get aws_access_key_id --profile ${profile})" || return 1
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="$(aws configure get aws_secret_access_key --profile ${profile})" || return 1
        AWS_SESSION_TOKEN="$(aws configure get aws_session_token --profile ${profile})" || return 1
        AWS_SECRET_KEY=${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}
        export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
        export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
        export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN
        export AWS_SECRET_KEY
        env | grep AWS_ | sort
    fi
}

Answer 3

There was no way previously, but there is now.

I wrote a script to do exactly this, aws-env:

usage: aws-env [-h] [-n] profile

Extract AWS credentials for a given profile as environment variables.

positional arguments:
  profile          The profile in ~/.aws/credentials to extract credentials
                   for.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  -n, --no-export  Do not use export on the variables.

If you trust the output of this program, you can use it within your shell session to export the variables of a given profile:

$ aws-env profile-name
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...
$ aws-env -n profile-name
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

To export the variables into the current environment variables, execute the output as a command (again, once you have reviewed the source code ;]):

$ echo $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

$ $(aws-env profile-name)
$ echo $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
AKJHC...

Answer 4

you could use the following command to set your environment variable

aws configure get default.aws_access_key_id
aws configure get default.aws_secret_access_key

if you have another profile you can change, another way to write is

aws configure get aws_access_key_id --profile <new_profile>
aws configure get aws_secret_access_key --profile <new_profile>

so for example it would be

export TF_VAR_access_key=`aws configure get default.aws_access_key_id`

Answer 5

I like Kay's ideas of a script that exports the desired profile so I wrote one too:

PROFILES=$(awk -F"\\\]|\\\[" '/^\[/{print $2}' ~/.aws/credentials)

select PROFILE in $PROFILES; do
  export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="$(aws configure get aws_access_key_id --profile $PROFILE)"
  export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="$(aws configure get aws_secret_access_key --profile $PROFILE)"
  export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="$(aws configure get region --profile $PROFILE)"
  break
done

echo AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
echo AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(echo $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY|tr '[:print:]' '*')
echo AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=$AWS_DEFAULT_REGION

Just put it in a file and then source (.) it from your shell.

Answer 6

None of these allow for role assumption in profiles (which I use heavily). I made the following very short script in python3 that uses boto3 to do the heavy lifting of role assumption and the like. It may be helpful.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# export the AWS environment for a given profile

import boto3
import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog="exportaws",
    description="Extract AWS credentials for a profile as env variables.")
parser.add_argument("profile", help="profile name in ~/.aws/config.")
args = parser.parse_args()
creds = boto3.session.Session(profile_name=args.profile).get_credentials()
print(f'export AWS_ACCESS_KEY={creds.access_key}')
print(f'export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={creds.secret_key}')
print(f'export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN={creds.token}')