Manage Variables with the Public API

Here are examples to help you manage your environment variables using the Public API.

Get variables

Fetch variables for a service in an environment:

Response:

Omit serviceId to get shared variables for an environment instead.

Get unrendered variables

Get variables with references intact (not resolved):

This returns variables like ${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}} instead of the resolved value.

Create or update a variable

Upsert a single variable:

Omit serviceId to create a shared variable instead.

Upsert multiple variables

Update multiple variables at once:

Delete a variable

Delete a single variable:

Get rendered variables for deployment

Get all variables as they would appear during a deployment (with all references resolved):

Variable references

Railway supports referencing variables from other services using the syntax:

For example, to reference a database URL from a Postgres service:

Common patterns

Copy variables between environments

1. Fetch variables from source environment
2. Upsert to target environment using variableCollectionUpsert

Import from .env file

Parse your .env file and use variableCollectionUpsert to set all variables at once.

Rotate secrets

Use variableUpsert with skipDeploys: true for all services, then trigger deployments manually when ready.