title: Setting Cloud Composer Environment Variables with Special Characters via gcloud
body: <p>I'm trying to figure out how to create a Google Cloud Composer environment via <code>gcloud</code> and set environment variables with some special characters.</p>
  <p>Example environmental variable:
  API_URL=https://stuff.api.thing.com</p>
  <p>Example of <code>gcloud</code> cmd I'm using:</p>
  <pre><code>gcloud composer environments create new-env-1 --location=us-central1 --airflow_configs=[core-dags_are_paused_at_creation=True] --env-variables=[API_URL=https://stuff.api.thing.com,env_type=dev] --node_count=3 --python-version=3 --image-version=composer-1.10.0-airflow-1.10.6 --network=projects/backcountry-data-team/global/networks/default
  </code></pre>
  <p>When running the example above, I get the following error:</p>
  <pre><code>ERROR: (gcloud.composer.environments.create) argument --env-variables: Bad value [[API_URL]: Only upper and lowercase letters, digits, and underscores are allowed. Environment variable names may not start with a digit.
  </code></pre>
  <p>This error is expected <a href="https://cloud.google.com/composer/docs/how-to/managing/environment-variables#gcloud" rel="nofollow noreferrer">based on the docs</a>.</p>
  <p>I am, however, able to set environmental variables like the example if I go through the GCP Console. So shouldn't there be a way to do this via <code>gcloud</code>?</p>