SDK for JS v3 asks for AWS_* env variables but amplify does not accept "AWS" word

[andre-mr]

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App Id

d3vc3r2jaskk9c

AWS Region

sa-east-1

Amplify Hosting feature

Backend builds, Environment variables, Frontend builds, SSR

Question

Hi.

I migrated a project to AWS-SDK For Javascript v3, and now I have some issues with credentials.
This doc says credentials from environment variables (method i was using in v2) are auto detected but with specific name convention: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY and AWS_SESSION_TOKEN:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-javascript/v3/developer-guide/loading-node-credentials-environment.html

Not using token part for now.

With version 2, I had to rename my variables starting with "AWS_", replacing with "AMAZON_" because amplify doesn't accept variables starting with "AWS" word.

Now I honestly don't know how this is intended for v3. SDK expecting "AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID" but amplify doesn't accept this naming convention.

I tried to deploy to Vercel, wich doesn't have "AWS" prefix restriction, and it worked as a charm.

This is the file where I setup DocumentClient, where I defined credentials with v2 and now it doesn't need for Vercel (as v3 docs stated by the way):

import { DynamoDBClient } from "@aws-sdk/client-dynamodb";
import { DynamoDBDocumentClient } from "@aws-sdk/lib-dynamodb";

const Table = process.env.AMAZON_DYNAMODB_TABLE;
const AMAZON_REGION = process.env.AMAZON_REGION;
const client = new DynamoDBClient({ region: AMAZON_REGION });
const docClient = DynamoDBDocumentClient.from(client);

const AWSDynamoDB = () => {
  return docClient;
};

export { AWSDynamoDB, Table };

Any ideas to deal with that, other than downgrading to v2?

[andre-mr]

Nevermind... found a solution, using "AMAZON_" instead of "AWS_" as I did with v2.

Just setup credentials parameter, this way:

const client = new DynamoDBClient({
  region: AMAZON_REGION,
  credentials: {
    accessKeyId: AMAZON_ACCESS_KEY_ID,
    secretAccessKey: AMAZON_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY,
  },
});

Really don't know why Amplify has "AWS*" as reserved prefix, since there are just a few default variables using that. 🤷‍♂️
You could revise this rule, to better match v3 convention about default env approach.

[Jay2113]

Hi @andre-mr 👋 , thanks for raising this with us!

You've correctly mentioned that Amplify Hosting does not allow the use of environment variables with a prefix of AWS* as it is reserved for internal use only and the following error will be returned in the console:

Operation failed - Environment variables cannot start with the reserved prefix "AWS".

We will update our documentation to accurately reflect the same.

[Jay2113]

@andre-mr 👋 , our documentation has been updated to reflect this information: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amplify/latest/userguide/environment-variables.html.

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