Credentials set as environment variables

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The Access Credentials can be supplied by using system environment variables.

Environment variables override configuration and credential files and can be useful for scripting or setting a named profile temporarily as the default.

Note: Setting Environment Variables varies by Operating System. For more information, see this Knowledge Base Article.
Table 1. Boto SDK supported environmental variables
Variable Purpose
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS access key.
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY AWS secret key. Access and secret key variables override credentials that are stored in both credential and config files.
AWS_SECURITY_TOKEN Security token. A web service that requests temporary, limited-privilege credentials for AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users or for users that you authenticate (federated users).
AWS_PROFILE Name of the profile to use. It can be the name of a profile that is stored in a credential or config file or default to use the default profile.
Example - Authentication by using Boto connection class constructor parameters.

s3 = boto.connect_s3( 1
  host = 'host.example.com',
  is_secure = false,
  calling_format = boto.s3.connection.OrdinaryCallingFormat(),
  )

1 The Boto SDK automatically reads the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key from the 
  Environment Variables. They do not need to be provided explicitly.