How do I pass environment variables to Docker containers?

You can pass environment variables to your containers with the -e flag.

An example from a startup script:

sudo docker run -d -t -i -e REDIS_NAMESPACE='staging' \ 
-e POSTGRES_ENV_POSTGRES_PASSWORD='foo' \
-e POSTGRES_ENV_POSTGRES_USER='bar' \
-e POSTGRES_ENV_DB_NAME='mysite_staging' \
-e POSTGRES_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR='docker-db-1.hidden.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com' \
-e SITE_URL='staging.mysite.com' \
-p 80:80 \
--link redis:redis \  
--name container_name dockerhub_id/image_name

Or, if you don't want to have the value on the command-line where it will be displayed by ps, etc., -e can pull in the value from the current environment if you just give it without the =:

sudo PASSWORD='foo' docker run  [...] -e PASSWORD [...]

If you have many environment variables and especially if they're meant to be secret, you can use an env-file:

$ docker run --env-file ./env.list ubuntu bash

The --env-file flag takes a filename as an argument and expects each line to be in the VAR=VAL format, mimicking the argument passed to --env. Comment lines need only be prefixed with #

If you are using 'docker-compose' as the method to spin up your container(s), there is actually a useful way to pass an environment variable defined on your server to the Docker container.

In your docker-compose.yml file, let's say you are spinning up a basic hapi-js container and the code looks like:

hapi_server:
  container_name: hapi_server
  image: node_image
  expose:
    - "3000"

Let's say that the local server that your docker project is on has an environment variable named 'NODE_DB_CONNECT' that you want to pass to your hapi-js container, and you want its new name to be 'HAPI_DB_CONNECT'. Then in the docker-compose.yml file, you would pass the local environment variable to the container and rename it like so:

hapi_server:
  container_name: hapi_server
  image: node_image
  environment:
    - HAPI_DB_CONNECT=${NODE_DB_CONNECT}
  expose:
    - "3000"

I hope this helps you to avoid hard-coding a database connect string in any file in your container!

You can pass using -e parameters with docker run .. command as mentioned here and as mentioned by @errata.

However, the possible downside of this approach is that your credentials will be displayed in the process listing, where you run it.

To make it more secure, you may write your credentials in a configuration file and do docker run with --env-file as mentioned here. Then you can control the access of that config file so that others having access to that machine wouldn't see your credentials.