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Storing API Keys / Environment Variables

In our rails project we want to store our API keys as environment variables, and block them from being pushed to places like github. We can store these keys in a .env file using the dotenv gem.

Step 1: Add the dotenv-rails gem to the Gemfile. The change should look something like this:

group :development, :test do
  gem 'dotenv-rails'
end

More information on the gem is available on the dot env github page.

Step 2: IMPORTANT your .gitignore file must ignore the file that will be created on the next step. DO NOT CHECK IN A .ENV FILE TO GITHUB!! The following line should be added to the .gitignore file and committed to github:

.env

Step 3: Add a .env file in the root of the project.

$ touch .env

The file contains keys and values. The keys will be accessible in the ENV hash of rails.

Step 4: Add your API keys to your .env file.

You should add your API key's to the .env file as key-value pairs.

.env

KEY_NAME_IN_CAPS: <api key>

example

TWITTER_KEY: dsa8d823nds032khf89d24f23s9h0387sdfocij
TWITTER_SECRET: v832mcsnhodsf873hcs78h89cds83hdh39c723jkds8

You can now call on your API keys as environment variables

example

ENV['TWITTER_KEY']