Use Bitwarden Secrets in GitHub Actions

The Bitwarden sm-action repository contains the source code for the Secrets Manager GitHub Action.

Use the GitHub action, bitwarden/sm-action, to retrieve secrets from the Bitwarden Secrets Manager for use inside GitHub Actions.

The bitwarden/sm-action will add retrieved secrets as masked environment variables inside a given GitHub action.

Review GitHub's recommendations for security hardening GitHub Actions when using sensitive secrets.

Usage

To use the action, add a step to your GitHub workflow using the following syntax:

- name: Step name
  uses: bitwarden/sm-action@v1
  with:
    access_token: ${{ secrets.ACCESS_TOKEN }}
    secrets: |
      SECRET_ID > ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE_NAME

Parameters

• access_token

  The service account access token for retrieving secrets.

  Use GitHub's encrypted secrets to store and retrieve service account access tokens securely.

• secrets

  One or more secret Ids to retrieve and the corresponding GitHub environment variable name to set.

  GitHub environment variables have stricter naming requirements than Bitwarden secrets.

  So the bitwarden/sm-action requires specifying an environment variable name for each secret retrieved in the following format:

  secrets: |
      SECRET_ID > ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE_NAME
  

  Example

      secrets: |
          00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 > TEST_EXAMPLE
  

• base_url

  (Optional) For self-hosted bitwarden instances provide your https://your.domain.com

  If this optional parameter is provided the parameters identity_url and api_url are not required.

  The GitHub action will use BASE_URL/identity and BASE_URL/api for the identity and api endpoints.

• identity_url

  (Optional) For self-hosted bitwarden instances provide your https://your.domain.com/identity

  The default value will use https://identity.bitwarden.com

• api_url

  (Optional) For self-hosted bitwarden instances provide your https://your.domain.com/api

  The default value will use https://api.bitwarden.com

Examples

- name: Get Secrets
  uses: bitwarden/sm-action@v1
  with:
    access_token: ${{ secrets.ACCESS_TOKEN }}
    secrets: |
      00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 > TEST_EXAMPLE
      bdbb16bc-0b9b-472e-99fa-af4101309076 > TEST_EXAMPLE_2

Environment variables created:

TEST_EXAMPLE: SECRET_VALUE_FOR_00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
TEST_EXAMPLE_2: SECRET_VALUE_FOR_bdbb16bc-0b9b-472e-99fa-af4101309076

Example usage

- name: Get Secrets
  uses: bitwarden/sm-action@v1
  with:
    access_token: ${{ secrets.ACCESS_TOKEN }}
    secrets: |
      00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 > TEST_EXAMPLE
- name: Use Secret
  run: example-command "$TEST_EXAMPLE"

Developing Bitwarden sm-action

Run Locally

Install the dependencies

$ npm install

Run formatter and lint

$ npm run prettier && npm run lint

Run the tests ✔️

$ npm test

Prepare Source for Distribution

GitHub recommends using a tool called @vercel/ncc to compile code and modules into one file used for distribution.

• Package the TypeScript for distribution

$ npm run bundle