Env Alias

Helper utility to create shell alias commands that easily set collections of environment variables often with secret values from a variety of data-sources and data-formats.

Typically this tool is invoked via an entry in .bash_aliases with an entry in the form

eval $(env-alias my-alias-name ~/path-to/my-alias-name-config-file.yml)

Where this example would establish a shell alias command for the alias my-alias-name that then invokes the env-alias-generator with configuration from ~/path-to/my-alias-name-config-file.yml

This provides an appropriate mechanism to manage large sets of environment variables with values from encrypted or otherwise secured data-sources through one simple alias command using a configuration file that can be safely committed to source control without exposing secret values.

Features

• Data sources: direct-setting, exec-stdout, local-file, http-remote
• Source file formats: text, ini, json, yaml
• Select using line-numbers, jq-style or xpath-style selections
• Reference other env values within configuration
• Content-Type detection for http-remote data-sources to automatically assign appropriate parser
• Exec helper commands without env-variable assignment
• Debug mode output to STDERR

Install

via PyPi

pip3 install env-alias

via Source

git clone https://github.com/ndejong/env-alias
cd env-alias
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 setup.py clean
python3 setup.py test
python3 setup.py install

Project

• github.com/ndejong/env-alias

Examples

A range of examples are provided that demonstrate real world setups to configure env-variables for using AWS, Google, Terraform, Ansible etc. Additionally the env-alias-examples.yml attempts to iterate all possible configuration combinations, many of which are presented below.

local_text_01

Assign the env local_text_01 to the value of the 1st line of text in /tmp/textfile.txt

env-alias:
  local_text_01:
    source: '/tmp/textfile.txt'

local_text_02

Assign the env local_text_02 to the value of the 2nd line of text in /tmp/textfile.txt

env-alias:
  local_text_02:
    source: '/tmp/textfile.txt'
    selector: 2

local_text_03

Assign the env local_text_03 using the 1st line of text in the text file; text file format used as default file format

env-alias:
  local_text_03:
    source: '/tmp/textfile_without_extension'

local_text_04

Assign the env local_text_04_override_name using the 1st line of text in the file and use a different variable name

env-alias:
  local_text_04:
    name: 'local_text_04_override_name'
    source: '/tmp/textfile.txt'

local_text_05

Assign the env local_text_05 using the 1st line of text in the file specified by env variable ${some_env_with_a_filename}

env-alias:
  local_text_05:
    source: 'env:some_env_with_a_filename'

local_text_06

Assign the env local_text_06 using the 1st line of text in the file and force the "text" content parser which is the default parser anyway

env-alias:
  local_text_06:
    source: '/tmp/textfile.txt'
    parser: 'text'

local_ini_01

Assign the env local_ini_01 from the [foo] section under the [bar] option value; parser determined by filename extension

env-alias:
  local_ini_01:
    source: '/tmp/inifile.ini'
    selector: 'foo.bar'

local_ini_02

Assign the env local_ini_02 from the [foo] section under the [bar] option value; parser manually set since it can not be determined via filename extension

env-alias:
  local_ini_02:
    source: '/tmp/file_without_ini_extension'
    selector: 'foo.bar'
    parser: 'ini'

local_json_01

Assign the env local_json_01 from the JSON content using an xpath-style path selector to the desired value

env-alias:
  local_json_01:
    source: '/tmp/jsonfile.json'
    selector: 'foo.0.bar'

local_json_02

Assign the env local_json_02 from the JSON content using a jq-style path selector to the desired value

env-alias:
  local_json_02:
    source: '/tmp/jsonfile.json'
    selector: '.foo[1]bar'

local_json_03

Assign the env local_json_03 from the JSON content using an xpath-style path selector to the desired value; set the JSON parser

env-alias:
  local_json_03:
    source: '/tmp/file_without_json_extension'
    selector: 'foo.0.bar'
    parser: 'json'

local_yaml_01

assign the env local_yaml_01 from the JSON content using an xpath-style path selector to the desired value; js-style is also possible here.

env-alias:
  local_yaml_01:
    source: '/tmp/yamlfile.yml'
    selector: 'foo.0.bar'

local_yaml_02

assign the env local_yaml_02 from the YAML content using an xpath-style path selector to the desired value; set the YAML parser

env-alias:
  local_yaml_02:
    source: '/tmp/file_without_yaml_extension'
    selector: 'foo.0.bar'
    parser: 'yaml'

remote_text_01

Assign the env remote_text_01 from the 1st line of the remote TEXT content

env-alias:
  remote_text_01:
    source: 'http://textfiles.com/computers/144disk.txt'

remote_json_01

Assign the env remote_json_01 from remote JSON content using a jq-style selector

env-alias:
  remote_json_01:
    source: 'https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json'
    selector: '.prefixes[2].ip_prefix'

remote_json_02

Assign the env remote_json_02 from remote JSON content using an xpath-style selector

env-alias:
  remote_json_02:
    source: 'https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json'
    selector: 'prefixes.2.ip_prefix'

exec_01

Assign the env exec_01 from the 1st line of the STDOUT of an shell command

env-alias:
  exec_01:
    exec: 'head /dev/urandom | base64 -w0 | tr -d "/" | tr -d "+" | head -c20'

exec_02

Assign the env exec_02 from the 1st line of the STDOUT of an shell command

env-alias:
  exec_02:
    exec: 'curl -s https://ip-ranges.amazonaws.com/ip-ranges.json'
    parser: 'json'
    selector: '.prefixes[1].ip_prefix'

exec_03

Run the shell-command and do not assign it to any env value

env-alias:
  exec_03:
    exec: 'head /dev/urandom | base64 -w0'
    selector: null

direct_01

Assign env direct_01 to value "somevalue"

env-alias:
  direct_01:
    value: 'somevalue'

direct_02

Use an existing env value as input into this configuration; can be used in any env-alias option

env-alias:
  direct_02:
    value: 'env:HOME'

direct_03

Set env set and override the variable name; can be used in any env-alias setting arrangement

env-alias:
  direct_03:
    name: 'direct_03_override_name'
    value: 'env:HOME'

Debug Output

Debug output can be easily added to STDERR by adding an optional -d argument to env-alias as shown below

eval $(env-alias my-alias-name -d ~/path-to/my-alias-name-config-file.yml)

This this provides debug output similar to below

username@computer:~$ my-alias-name
20191201Z072045 - DEBUG - env-alias v0.0.1
20191201Z072045 - DEBUG -  export "local_text_01"="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
20191201Z072045 - DEBUG -  export "local_text_02"="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
...

Authors

Nicholas de Jong

License

BSD-2-Clause - see LICENSE file for full details.