Environment variables from file in Actions

[jesvilnie]

Having the possibility to define environment variables in the Actions is crucial in most situations, but it would be really nice to have the possibility to specify these variables from a file, so they can be reused across multiple actions without the need of replicate the list of env vars in each action.

It would be something like this:

---
name: "my_script"
runner_type: "remote-shell-cmd"
description: "Remote CMD with envs form file"
enabled: true
env_file: "/path/to/my/env/file"

Or as a parameter:

---
name: "my_script"
runner_type: "remote-shell-cmd"
description: "Remote CMD with envs form file"
enabled: true
parameters:
    env_file: 
       type: "string"
       default: "/path/to/my/env/file"

[chain312]

I think we can write an application package, put the environment variable configuration in the package configuration, and then use this configuration for all the actions in this package.

[nzlosh]

A workaround to get this functionality would be to provide a json file with the environment variables that is read in an action prior to calling core.remote and then pass the contents via the env parameter.

For example (not tested)

/path/to/action_env.json

{
  "username": "user1",
  "url": "https://example.com/",
  "project_id": "abcd2134"
}

Load the environment file. StackStorm will automatically deserialise JSON content from stdout. The deserialised JSON can be published for use in subsequent actions.

  load_env:
    action: core.local
    input:
      - cmd: cat /path/to/action_env.json
    next:
      - do: run_remote_cmd
        when: <% succeeded() %>
        publish:
          env_kw: <%  result().stdout %>

  run_remote_cmd:
    action: core.remote
    input:
        hosts: somehost.example.com
        env: <% ctx().env_kw %>
        cmd: "echo $USERNAME $URL $PROJECT_ID"