Manifest Environment Variables for Array

[Kqirk]

Hi,

Is there an example on how to parse an array of strings from a shell variable to the manifest.yml?

• I'm trying to to parameterise my security_groups field for different environments.

• My current approach is using a script to set the shell variables before deploying as per https://aws.github.io/copilot-cli/docs/developing/manifest-env-var/

• I'm using "source .env" to set the shell variables

• There should be no issues with my set up as it works for non array strings

• My code is as follows:

manifest.yaml:
network:
vpc:
security_groups: ${SECURITY_GROUPS}

my .env file (values substituted out):
SECURITY_GROUPS=["sg-1","sg-2","sg-3","sg-4"]

The error:
unable to unmarshal "security_groups" field into slice of strings or compose-style map

• I've also tried many different variations of where I placed the double quotes, using () instead of [], they all return the same error

• A way that would work is:

security_groups:
-${sg_1}
-${sg_2}
...

• However, that would cause some mismatch if the number of SGs differ etc.

Any advice and help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading this and for your time.

[Lou1415926]

Hello @Kqirk 👋🏼 I can confirm that non-array env vars aren't supported in the manifest yet.

A short explanation - ⬇️ is not working because ${SECURITY_GROUPS} is recognized as a string first, before Copilot even tries to read it as an env var. This causes failure to unmarshal, because security_groups as a YAML field is expecting slice of strings or compose-style map.

network:
  vpc:
    security_groups: ${SECURITY_GROUPS}

This is an interesting case that you raised, perhaps Copilot should support non-string env vars types.

For now, I think you probably do need to write it as ⬇️ unfortunately : (

security_groups:
  -${sg_1}
  -${sg_2}

I understand that the number of SGs might differ across envs, but are they not known in advance? Are you probably aware that manifest supports environment overrides like below:

network:
  vpc:
     security_groups: ["sg-1","sg-2"]
environments:
  test:
    network:
      vpc:
       security_groups: ["sg-3","sg-4", "sg-5"]
  prod:
    network:
      vpc:
       security_groups: ["sg-3","sg-4"]

[Kqirk]

Hi @Lou1415926 , thank you for your reply and time!
Thanks for confirming and the explanation too!
We're actually writing our manifest.yml in hopes that Copilot supports non-string env vars type in future, as well as an env file for the manifest.yml.
We're aware of the environment overrides too, and as mentioned above, non-string vars will be written there. The issue we have is that we have 5 services (and probably more Jobs upcoming), where the last code snippet has to be replicated 5 times at least. Thus, changing a single value would require changing in 5 different places, so we're hesitant to use that. At the moment, we're leaning towards the ${sg-1}, ${sg-2}, method.

Once again, thank you so much!

[Lou1415926]

Ah I see, that makes sense to me! I've created a GitHub issue for us to keep track of this ask: #4928. You can give it a 👍🏼!

[huanjani]

This is now enabled in v1.29.0: https://github.com/aws/copilot-cli/releases/tag/v1.29.0!