How can I read a Kubernetes secret?

Around 1 minute

Often times, it can be useful to check the value of a Kubernetes secret, to check that it lines up with what an application is receiving. An example might be a randomly generated secret that is shared between multiple Kubernetes resources.

Let's have a look at a mock secret:

> kubectl describe secret dummy-secret
Name:         dummy-secret
Namespace:    sports
Labels:       app.kubernetes.io/managed-by=Helm
Annotations:  meta.helm.sh/release-name: sports
              meta.helm.sh/release-namespace: sports
 
Type:  Opaque
 
Data
====
MY_FAVOURITE_FRUIT:  12 bytes

> kubectl describe secret dummy-secret
Name:         dummy-secret
Namespace:    sports
Labels:       app.kubernetes.io/managed-by=Helm
Annotations:  meta.helm.sh/release-name: sports
              meta.helm.sh/release-namespace: sports
 
Type:  Opaque
 
Data
====
MY_FAVOURITE_FRUIT:  12 bytes

So here we have a secret called dummy-secret and one of the values within it has the name MY_FAVOURITE_FRUIT.

We can fetch it like so:

> kubectl get secret dummy-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.MY_FAVOURITE_FRUIT}" | base64 --decode
strawberries

> kubectl get secret dummy-secret -o jsonpath="{.data.MY_FAVOURITE_FRUIT}" | base64 --decode
strawberries