At times while CI/CD with Github Actions, you need to read environment variables stored in Github Secrets. This article describes how you can access Github Secrets stored in Github while doing CI/CD.

Steps

• Go to Github Repository > Settings. From the left menu, selection Secrets > Actions

• Select New repository secret and add a key-value pair. For our example, we have used the key name as T1 and Value as Hello world and save it

• Once you save it, it should be visible on the screen

• You need to add the secret in your Github Actions Workflow file where it can be called as.

env:
    T1: ${{secrets.T1}}

Here, the value secrets.T1 stored in Github Secrets is assigned to a Runner environment variable with key T1. secrets is a prefix that you need to use to access the variable from Github

• Lastly, here is the skeleton of the Github Actions that you need to call.

name: Read environment variable in Github Secrets from your program

on:
    push:
        branches: ["master"]
    pull_request:
        branches: ["master"]

env:
    T1: ${{secrets.T1}}

jobs:
    build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
            - uses: actions/checkout@v3

            - name: Environment list
              run: env

Optional

• I have created a sample Golang program to demonstrate a complete Workflow Github Actions workflow. Once you do that, you should access this in your unit tests and code (for the sample Golang program) as

env1, err1 := os.LookupEnv("T1")
log.Println(env1, err1)

Download source code