Why this?

I'm assuming that you're using the declarative Kubernetes format for setup your workload.

Well... I was working on a project with more than 40 .env (dotenv) files in multiple projects that implements the 12factor methodology. However they were using clear text env vars with sensitive keys, tokens and data on the PODs spec to make the workloads run into a Kubernetes cluster.

As we know this is not safe.

So I decided to move all of that clear text env vars to Kubernetes Secrets. But wait... more than 40 .env (dotenv), such a bored task to do manually 😐 . I hope this helps you as has helped me.

How it works

Let's say that you have an .env (dotenv) file with this content that you want to create a Kubernetes Secret object.

USERNAME=username
PASSWORD=password

All you need to do is

pip install dotenv2k8s
dotenv2k8s --path=/path/to/the/dotenv/.env

Secret name: my-secret
Kubernetes Namespace [default]: my-namespace

You can also to do this to achieve the same result

dotenv2k8s --path=/path/to/the/dotenv/.env --name=my-secret --namespace=my-namespace

Where:

• path: is the absolute path to the .env (dotenv) file

• Secret name: is the name of the object

• Kubernetes Namespace [default]: is the namespace of where the secret will be available ( default is the k8s 'default' namespace)

You will ended up with a file named secret-my-secret-my-namespace.yaml with the content

Another suggestion is to put this tool in a shell script that does it at once, for instance:

YAML output

apiVersion: v1
data:
  USERNAME: YWRtaW4=
  PASSWORD: MWYyZDFlMmU2N2Rm
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: my-secret
  namespace: my-namespace
type: Opaque
---
# POD spec for more information go to https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/secret/#using-secrets-as-environment-variables
- name: USERNAME
  valueFrom:
    secretKeyRef:
      key: USERNAME
      name: my-secret
      optional: false
- name: PASSWORD
  valueFrom:
    secretKeyRef:
      key: PASSWORD
      name: my-secret
      optional: false

To conclude, create the object in the cluster, use it on the PODs and paste the POD spec into the POD manifest.

kubectl apply -f secret-my-secret-my-namespace.yaml