Credentials are the most important thing you need to set when using any AWS SDK. Credentials can be
set globally on the
AWS.config
object or per service by passing the credential information to the service
object directly.
There are a few ways to load credentials. Here they are, in order of recommendation:
1. Loaded from environment variables,
2. Loaded from a JSON file on disk,
3. Loaded from EC2 metadata service,
4. Hardcoded in your application
We recommend you not hard-code your AWS credentials in your application; however, it is reasonable
to temporarily hard-code credential information in small personal scripts or for testing purposes.
Credentials from Environment Variables
By default, the AWS SDK for Node.js will automatically detect AWS credentials set in your environment
and use them for requests. This means that if you properly set your environment variables, you do not
need to manage credentials in your application at all.
The keys that the SDK looks for are as follows:
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SESSION_TOKEN (optional)
Alternately, the SDK can accept the
AMAZON_
prefix instead:
AMAZON_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AMAZON_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AMAZON_SESSION_TOKEN (optional)
Credentials from Disk
You can also load configuration and credentials from disk using
AWS.config.loadFromPath
by passing
a file to a JSON document containing the configuration data. For example, if you had a file named
'config.json' with the contents:
{ "accessKeyId": "akid", "secretAccessKey": "secret", "region": "us-east-1" }
You can load the JSON data using the command:
AWS.config.loadFromPath('./config.json');
Note that the
loadFromPath
method clobbers all existing configuration on the object. If you are adding
extra configuration, make sure you add it after this call.
Hard-Coding Credentials
Note
We recommend you not hard-code credentials inside an application. Use this method only for
small personal scripts or for testing purposes.
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AWS SDK for Node.js Getting Started Guide
Setting AWS Credentials
