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Using Contexts

1. What is a Context?​

Contexts provide a mechanism for securing and sharing environment variables across projects. The environment variables are defined as name/value pairs. The environment variables are injected at runtime.

This document describes creating and using contexts in CircleCI. You can create and manage contexts on the Organization Settings page of the CircleCI web app. You must be an organization member to view, create, or edit contexts. After a context has been created, you can use the context key in the workflows section of a project config.yml file to give any job(s) access to the environment variables associated with the context.

2. Create a context​

In CircleCI web app, go to the Organization Settings page. There, choose Contexts.

This page will show you a list of all existing contexts, and a button that allows you to create a new one.

When creating a new one, you'll need to provide a name. That name will be used in your config.yaml file.

3. Project Restriction​

By default, a context with no restrictions is available to all projects.

You have an option in the web app to choose repos that are allowed to use this context.

4. Add Environment variables​

Inside a context, you'll have a button for adding a new environment variable.

The format, as mentioned, is key/value.

5. Referencing a context in the config.yaml​

Here's an example from your code:

.circleci/config.yml
version: 2.1

executors:
  nodejs-executor:
    docker:
      - image: cimg/node:22.16.0
    resource_class: large

# -----------
# Define Jobs
# -----------
jobs:
  # Job name
  build:
    executor: nodejs-executor
    working_directory: ~/app
    # list of steps
    steps:
      - run:
          name: "Step: check context variables"
          command: echo $ENV_VAR_FROM_CONTEXT

# ----------------
# Define Workflows
# ----------------
workflows:
  # Workflow name
  'Build & Test':
    # List of jobs
    jobs:
      - build:
          context: luckylove

Let's break it down:

  • When we define job A, we don't give it a context yet.
  • When we use a job in a workflow, we can then apply the context.

Why like this?

It would make sense to define a job once, and then run it once with context A, and then once again with context B. Therefore, we do not assign context on a job, only on a job invocation.

In short, contexts are being applied to jobs only at runtime! At the time of definition, the job had no clue what its context is going to be.