Secret Referencing and Importing

Learn the fundamentals of secret referencing and importing in Infisical.

Secret Referencing

Infisical’s secret referencing functionality makes it possible to reference the value of a “base” secret when defining the value of another secret. This means that updating the value of a base secret propagates directly to other secrets whose values depend on the base secret.

Since secret referencing works by reconstructing values back on the client side, the client, be it a user, service token, or a machine identity, fetching back secrets must be permissioned access to all base and dependent secrets.

For example, to access some secret A whose values depend on secrets B and C from different scopes, a client must have read access to the scopes of secrets A, B, and C.

Syntax

When defining a secret reference, interpolation syntax is used to define references to secrets in other environments and folders.

Suppose you have some secret MY_SECRET at the root of some environment and want to reference part of its value from another base secret BASE_SECRET located elsewhere. Then consider the following scenarios:

• If BASE_SECRET is in the same environment and folder as MY_SECRET, then you’d reference it using ${BASE_SECRET}.
• If BASE_SECRET is at the root of another environment with the slug dev, then you’d reference it using ${dev.MY_SECRET}.

Here are a few more helpful examples for how to reference secrets in different contexts:

Reference syntax	Environment	Folder	Secret Key
${KEY1}	same env	same folder	KEY1
${dev.KEY2}	dev	/ (root of dev environment)	KEY2
${prod.frontend.KEY2}	prod	/frontend	KEY2

Secret Imports

Infisical’s Secret Imports functionality makes it possible to import the secrets from another environment or folder into the current folder context. This can be useful if you have common secrets that need to be available across multiple environments/folders.

To add a secret import, press the downward chevron to the right of the Add Secret button; then press on the Add Import button.

Once added, a secret import will show up with a green import icon on the secrets dashboard. In the example below, you can see that the items in the path /some-folder are being imported into the current folder context.

To delete a secret import, hover over it and press the X button that appears on the right side.

Lastly, note that the order of secret imports matters. If two secret imports contain secrets with the same name, then the secret value from the bottom-most secret import is taken — “the last one wins.”

To reorder a secret import, hover over it and drag the arrows handle to the position you want.