external-secrets/docs/api/externalsecret.md

The ExternalSecret describes what data should be fetched, how the data should be transformed and saved as a Kind=Secret:

• tells the operator what secrets should be synced by using spec.data to explicitly sync individual keys or use spec.dataFrom to get all values from the external API.
• you can specify how the secret should look like by specifying a spec.target.template

Template

When the controller reconciles the ExternalSecret it will use the spec.template as a blueprint to construct a new Kind=Secret. You can use golang templates to define the blueprint and use template functions to transform secret values. You can also pull in ConfigMaps that contain golang-template data using templateFrom. See advanced templating for details.

Update Behavior

The Kind=Secret is updated when:

• the spec.refreshInterval has passed and is not 0
• the ExternalSecret's labels or annotations are changed
• the ExternalSecret's spec has been changed

You can trigger a secret refresh by using kubectl or any other kubernetes api client:

kubectl annotate es my-es force-sync=$(date +%s) --overwrite

Features

Individual features are described in the Guides section:

• Find many secrets / Extract from structured data
• Templating
• Using Generators
• Secret Ownership and Deletion
• Key Rewriting
• Decoding Strategy

Example

Take a look at an annotated example to understand the design behind the ExternalSecret.

{% include 'full-external-secret.yaml' %}