LoadBalancedFargateService does not expose environment variables

When using the higher level LoadBalancedFargateService construct to create a load balanced Fargate service, it’s not possible to configure the container at runtime with environment variables.

[eladb]

@PaulMaddox the reason the code above doesn’t work is because the TaskDef child is not a CfnTaskDefinition (L1), it’s a FargateTaskDefinition (L2). Furthermore, since ContainerDefinition is not an L1 resource (but rather part of another L1 resource), you can’t really assign it to containerDefinitions.

Anyway, here’s a way to achieve this:

const taskDef = nginxService.node
  .findAll()
  .find(x => x instanceof ecs.CfnTaskDefinition) as ecs.CfnTaskDefinition;

taskDef.addPropertyOverride('ContainerDefinitions.0.Environment', [
  { name: 'TEST_ENV', value: 'TEST_VALUE' }
]);

Not very elegant, and relies on the fact that the container definition you wish to override is the first in the array, but should work.

[PaulMaddox]

Hi @SoManyHs - to start with, i was starting with just trying to set basic environment variables, but suspect customers would also want to use ECS Secrets longer term.

I would expect the API to mirror the way environment variables and secrets are provided in task definitions. For example:

// Create a nginx service
const nginxService = new ecs.LoadBalancedFargateService(this, 'NginxService', {
  cluster: cluster,
  image: ecs.ContainerImage.fromDockerHub('nginx:latest'),
  environment: [ { name: "TEST_ENV", value: "test value" } ],
  secrets: [ { name: "TEST_SECRET",  valueFrom: "arn:aws:ssm:region:aws_account_id:parameter/parameter_name" } ],
})

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/specifying-sensitive-data.html