Last reviewed: 2026-07-28

Configuring your app with environment variables

We recommend passing configuration to your app as environment variables, defined in the env block of your values.yaml.

Table of contents

• Plain values
• Larger configuration blocks
• Where to go next

Plain values

The simplest form is a literal name/value pair:

env:
  - name: ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT
    value: "Staging"
  - name: ASPNETCORE_HTTP_PORTS
    value: "8080"
  - name: MyDependencyService__apiBasePath
    value: "http://mydependency-service.my-namespace.svc.cluster.local:8080"

Nested configuration keys (as used by ASP.NET Core’s IConfiguration, for example) are expressed with a double underscore, as in MyDependencyService__apiBasePath above.

Larger configuration blocks

For configuration that doesn’t fit naturally as individual environment variables — a whole appsettings.json overlay, a logging config file, and the like — use configMaps instead and mount the result as a file:

configMaps:
  - name: myapp-config
    data:
      appsettings.override.json: |
        {
          "Logging": {
            "LogLevel": {
              "Default": "Information"
            }
          }
        }

volumes:
  - name: config-volume
    configMap:
      name: myapp-config

volumeMounts:
  - name: config-volume
    mountPath: /app/config

Where to go next

• Working with Secrets — for anything that shouldn’t be a plain-text value, such as passwords or API keys.
• IDE autocomplete and validation for values.yaml — set up inline validation so your editor flags invalid env and configMaps entries as you type.
• The full set of env and configMaps options is documented in the idp-advanced schema reference.

If you’re unsure which approach fits your case, ask on Slack — the IDP team is happy to help.