Search code examples
pythonyamlcryptographygithub-actionsssh-keys

How to pass a .pem key in GitHub actions via environment variable without characters causing YAML parsing issues

I have a GitHub environment secret {{ secrets.GITHUBAPP_KEY } that holds a .pem key, in a workflow step, I'm trying to pass the secret to an env variable GITHUBAPP_KEY

  - name: Do Certain Step
    run:  Insert fancy command here
    env:
      GITHUBAPP_KEY: "${{ secrets.GITHUBAPP_KEY }}"

Here is the error the GitHub actio workflow gets when I run it:

error: error parsing STDIN: invalid Yaml document separator: --END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----"

The key is the correct format, I have also wrapped double quotes around the secrets context, yet, the file still does not get parsed correctly.

How can I solve this issue?

Solution

  • As the SSH private key is spanned over multiple lines, you can assign it to an env var as a multiline string by using pipe | like this:

    env:
  GITHUBAPP_KEY: |
    ${{ secrets.GITHUBAPP_KEY }}

    See https://yaml-multiline.info/ for interactive examples.