Environment properties and other software settings - AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Environment properties and other software settings

The Configure updates, monitoring, and logging configuration page lets you configure the software on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances that run your application. You can configure environment properties, AWS X-Ray debugging, instance log storing and streaming, and platform-specific settings.

Configure platform-specific settings

In addition to the standard set of options available for all environments, most Elastic Beanstalk platforms let you specify language-specific or framework-specific settings. These appear in the Platform software section of the Configure updates, monitoring, and logging page, and can take the following forms.

  • Preset environment properties – The Ruby platform uses environment properties for framework settings, such as RACK_ENV and BUNDLE_WITHOUT.

  • Placeholder environment properties – The Tomcat platform defines an environment property named JDBC_CONNECTION_STRING that is not set to any value. This type of setting was more common on older platform versions.

  • Configuration options – Most platforms define configuration options in platform-specific or shared namespaces, such as aws:elasticbeanstalk:xray or aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python.

To configure platform-specific settings in the Elastic Beanstalk console
  1. Open the Elastic Beanstalk console, and in the Regions list, select your AWS Region.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Environments, and then choose the name of your environment from the list.

    Note

    If you have many environments, use the search bar to filter the environment list.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Configuration.

  4. In the Updates, monitoring, and logging configuration category, choose Edit.

  5. Under Platform software, make necessary option setting changes.

  6. To save the changes choose Apply at the bottom of the page.

For information about platform-specific options, and about getting environment property values in your code, see the platform topic for your language or framework:

Configuring environment properties (environment variables)

You can use environment properties, (also known as environment variables), to pass secrets, endpoints, debug settings, and other information to your application. Environment properties help you run your application in multiple environments for different purposes, such as development, testing, staging, and production.

In addition, when you add a database to your environment, Elastic Beanstalk sets environment properties, such as RDS_HOSTNAME, that you can read in your application code to construct a connection object or string.

Environment variables

In most cases, environment properties are passed to your application as environment variables, but the behavior is platform dependent. For example, the Java SE platform sets environment variables that you retrieve with System.getenv, while the Tomcat platform sets Java system properties that you retrieve with System.getProperty. In general, properties are not visible if you connect to an instance and run env.

To configure environment properties in the Elastic Beanstalk console
  1. Open the Elastic Beanstalk console, and in the Regions list, select your AWS Region.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Environments, and then choose the name of your environment from the list.

    Note

    If you have many environments, use the search bar to filter the environment list.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Configuration.

  4. In the Updates, monitoring, and logging configuration category, choose Edit.

  5. Scroll down to Environment properties.

  6. Select Add environment property.

  7. Enter the property Name and Value pairs.

  8. If you need to add more variables repeat Step 6 and Step 7.

  9. To save the changes choose Apply at the bottom of the page.

Environment property limits
  • Keys can contain any alphanumeric characters and the following symbols: _ . : / + \ - @

    The symbols listed are valid for environment property keys, but might not be valid for environment variable names on your environment's platform. For compatibility with all platforms, limit environment properties to the following pattern: [A-Z_][A-Z0-9_]*

  • Values can contain any alphanumeric characters, white space, and the following symbols: _ . : / = + \ - @ ' "

    Note

    Some characters in environment property values must be escaped. Use the backslash character (\) to represent some special characters and control characters. The following list includes examples for representing some characters that need to be escaped:

    • backslash (\) — to represent use \\

    • single quote (') — to represent use \'

    • double quote (") — to represent use \"

  • Keys and values are case sensitive.

  • The combined size of all environment properties cannot exceed 4,096 bytes when stored as strings with the format key=value.

Software setting namespaces

You can use a configuration file to set configuration options and perform other instance configuration tasks during deployments. Configuration options can be defined by the Elastic Beanstalk service or the platform that you use and are organized into namespaces.

You can use Elastic Beanstalk configuration files to set environment properties and configuration options in your source code. Use the aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment namespace to define environment properties.

Example .ebextensions/options.config
option_settings: aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment: API_ENDPOINT: www.example.com/api

If you use configuration files or AWS CloudFormation templates to create custom resources, you can use an AWS CloudFormation function to get information about the resource and assign it to an environment property dynamically during deployment. The following example from the elastic-beanstalk-samples GitHub repository uses the Ref function to get the ARN of an Amazon SNS topic that it creates, and assigns it to an environment property named NOTIFICATION_TOPIC.

Notes
  • If you use an AWS CloudFormation function to define an environment property, the Elastic Beanstalk console displays the value of the property before the function is evaluated. You can use the get-config platform script to confirm the values of environment properties that are available to your application.

  • The Multicontainer Docker platform doesn't use AWS CloudFormation to create container resources. As a result, this platform doesn't support defining environment properties using AWS CloudFormation functions.

Example .Ebextensions/sns-topic.config
Resources: NotificationTopic: Type: AWS::SNS::Topic option_settings: aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment: NOTIFICATION_TOPIC: '`{"Ref" : "NotificationTopic"}`'

You can also use this feature to propagate information from AWS CloudFormation pseudo parameters. This example gets the current region and assigns it to a property named AWS_REGION.

Example .Ebextensions/env-regionname.config
option_settings: aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment: AWS_REGION: '`{"Ref" : "AWS::Region"}`'

Most Elastic Beanstalk platforms define additional namespaces with options for configuring software that runs on the instance, such as the reverse proxy that relays requests to your application. For more information about the namespaces available for your platform, see the following:

Elastic Beanstalk provides many configuration options for customizing your environment. In addition to configuration files, you can also set configuration options using the console, saved configurations, the EB CLI, or the AWS CLI. See Configuration options for more information.

Accessing environment properties

In most cases, you access environment properties in your application code like an environment variable. In general, however, environment properties are passed only to the application and can't be viewed by connecting an instance in your environment and running env.

  • Goos.Getenv

    endpoint := os.Getenv("API_ENDPOINT")
  • Java SESystem.getenv

    String endpoint = System.getenv("API_ENDPOINT");
  • TomcatSystem.getProperty

    String endpoint = System.getProperty("API_ENDPOINT");
  • .NET Core on LinuxEnvironment.GetEnvironmentVariable

    string endpoint = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("API_ENDPOINT");
  • .NETappConfig

    NameValueCollection appConfig = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings; string endpoint = appConfig["API_ENDPOINT"];
  • Node.jsprocess.env

    var endpoint = process.env.API_ENDPOINT
  • PHP$_SERVER

    $endpoint = $_SERVER['API_ENDPOINT'];
  • Pythonos.environ

    import os endpoint = os.environ['API_ENDPOINT']
  • RubyENV

    endpoint = ENV['API_ENDPOINT']

Outside of application code, such as in a script that runs during deployment, you can access environment properties with the get-config platform script. See the elastic-beanstalk-samples GitHub repository for example configurations that use get-config.