Provide temporary credentials to the AWS SDK for Java

Use the default credential provider chain (recommended) .

Use a specific credential provider or provider chain (or create your own).

Supply the temporary credentials yourself in code.

Using the Default Credential Provider Chain

When you initialize a new service client without supplying any arguments, the AWS SDK for Java attempts to find temporary credentials by using the default credential provider chain implemented by the DefaultAWSCredentialsProviderChain class. The default credential provider chain looks for credentials in this order:

Environment variables - AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID , AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY , and AWS_SESSION_TOKEN . The AWS SDK for Java uses the EnvironmentVariableCredentialsProvider class to load these credentials.

Java system properties - aws.accessKeyId , aws.secretKey , and aws.sessionToken . The AWS SDK for Java uses the SystemPropertiesCredentialsProvider to load these credentials.

Web Identity Token credentials from the environment or container.

The default credential profiles file - typically located at ~/.aws/credentials (location can vary per platform), and shared by many of the AWS SDKs and by the AWS CLI. The AWS SDK for Java uses the ProfileCredentialsProvider to load these credentials.

You can create a credentials file by using the aws configure command provided by the AWS CLI, or you can create it by editing the file with a text editor. For information about the credentials file format, see AWS Credentials File Format .

Amazon ECS container credentials - loaded from the Amazon ECS if the environment variable AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_RELATIVE_URI is set. The AWS SDK for Java uses the ContainerCredentialsProvider to load these credentials. You can specify the IP address for this value.

Instance profile credentials - used on EC2 instances, and delivered through the Amazon EC2 metadata service. The AWS SDK for Java uses the InstanceProfileCredentialsProvider to load these credentials. You can specify the IP address for this value.

Set temporary credentials

To be able to use AWS temporary credentials, they must be set in at least one of the preceding locations. For information about setting credentials, see the following topics:

To specify credentials in the environment or in the default credential profiles file , see Configure temporary credentials .

To set Java system properties , see the System Properties tutorial on the official Java Tutorials website.

To set up and use instance profile credentials with your EC2 instances, see Using IAM Roles to Grant Access to AWS Resources on Amazon EC2 .

Set an alternate credentials profile

The AWS SDK for Java uses the default profile by default, but there are ways to customize which profile is sourced from the credentials file.

You can use the AWS Profile environment variable to change the profile loaded by the SDK.

For example, on Linux, macOS, or Unix you would run the following command to change the profile to myProfile .

export AWS_PROFILE="myProfile"

On Windows you would use the following.

set AWS_PROFILE="myProfile"

Setting the AWS_PROFILE environment variable affects credential loading for all officially supported AWS SDKs and Tools (including the AWS CLI and the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell). To change only the profile for a Java application, you can use the system property aws.profile instead.

Set an alternate credentials file location

The AWS SDK for Java loads AWS temporary credentials automatically from the default credentials file location. However, you can also specify the location by setting the AWS_CREDENTIAL_PROFILES_FILE environment variable with the full path to the credentials file.

You can use this feature to temporarily change the location where the AWS SDK for Java looks for your credentials file (for example, by setting this variable with the command line). Or you can set the environment variable in your user or system environment to change it for the user or systemwide.

To override the default credentials file location

Set the AWS_CREDENTIAL_PROFILES_FILE environment variable to the location of your AWS credentials file.

On Linux, macOS, or Unix, use:

export AWS_CREDENTIAL_PROFILES_FILE=path/to/credentials_file

On Windows, use:

set AWS_CREDENTIAL_PROFILES_FILE=path/to/credentials_file

Credentials file format

By following the instructions in the Basic setup of this guide, your credentials file should have the following basic format.

[default]
aws_access_key_id=<value from AWS access portal>
aws_secret_access_key=<value from AWS access portal>
aws_session_token=<value from AWS access portal>
[profile2]
aws_access_key_id=<value from AWS access portal>
aws_secret_access_key=<value from AWS access portal>
aws_session_token=<value from AWS access portal>

The profile name is specified in square brackets (for example, [default] ), followed by the configurable fields in that profile as key-value pairs. You can have multiple profiles in your credentials file, which can be added or edited using aws configure --profile PROFILE_NAME to select the profile to configure.

You can specify additional fields, such as metadata_service_timeout , and metadata_service_num_attempts . These are not configurable with the CLI—​you must edit the file by hand if you want to use them. For more information about the configuration file and its available fields, see Configuring the AWS Command Line Interface in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Load credentials

After you set temporary credentials, the SDK loads them by using the default credential provider chain.

To do this, you instantiate an AWS service client without explicitly providing credentials to the builder, as follows.

AmazonS3 s3Client = AmazonS3ClientBuilder.standard()
                       .withRegion(Regions.US_WEST_2)
                       .build();

Specify a credential provider or provider chain

You can specify a credential provider that is different from the default credential provider chain by using the client builder.

You provide an instance of a credentials provider or provider chain to a client builder that takes an AWSCredentialsProvider interface as input. The following example shows how to use environment credentials specifically.

AmazonS3 s3Client = AmazonS3ClientBuilder.standard()
                       .withCredentials(new EnvironmentVariableCredentialsProvider())
                       .build();

For the full list of AWS SDK for Java-supplied credential providers and provider chains, see All Known Implementing Classes in AWSCredentialsProvider .

Explicitly specify temporary credentials

If the default credential chain or a specific or custom provider or provider chain doesn’t work for your code, you can set credentials that you supply explicitly. If you’ve retrieved temporary credentials using AWS STS, use this method to specify the credentials for AWS access.

Instantiate the BasicSessionCredentials class, and supply it with the AWS access key, AWS secret key, and AWS session token that the SDK will use for the connection.

Create an AWSStaticCredentialsProvider with the AWSCredentials object.

Configure the client builder with the AWSStaticCredentialsProvider and build the client.

The following is an example.

BasicSessionCredentials awsCreds = new BasicSessionCredentials("access_key_id", "secret_key_id", "session_token");
AmazonS3 s3Client = AmazonS3ClientBuilder.standard()
                        .withCredentials(new AWSStaticCredentialsProvider(awsCreds))
                        .build();

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