Context
Hi! I have multiple Heroku apps deployed by the same repository on github. The only difference is that they have different build args, as defined in my Dockerfile:
ARG REACT_APP_ENV
Problem
I thought of using heroku's config vars, but they are not available at build-time.
The problem with using the heroku build-time config vars on heroku.yml is that I want it to be different depending on the heroku app (also I don't want to write them on the code or push them to github).
How can I set multiple build-time config vars depending on the app?
As of the time of this answer, there is no way to obtain config vars at build time, so the solution would be to build the image locally.
Related
Heroku Docker build docs say:
The config field of the build section allows you set environment variables available to the build environment. Variables set in this section do not create runtime config vars. Also runtime config vars (e.g., those set with heroku config:set) are not available at build-time.
So how should I set secrets during build time safely (i.e. without committing them)?
Background: Rails + Webpacker + React app on Heroku in Docker, trying to get an API key to the client side.
I need to set up an environment variable for my rails app. Both in my local machine and in the production server. I read some tutorials on the internet but NONE has given the complete instruction on how to set and use these variable in the actual production server. I use digital ocean and linux server to host my rails app.
I have spent days trying to figure this out, but still haven't found a clear and complete instruction from setting the variables on my local machine -> push it to git repo -> set and use the variables in production server. So, hope somebody can help me here, thanks!
UPDATE:
This is how I currently setup the environment variables in my rails app by using figoro gem:
You can set system-wide environment variables in the /etc/rc.local file (which is executed when the system boots). If your Rails app is the sole user of the Linux system, that is a good place to store credentials such as API keys because there is no risk of including this file in a public Git repository, as it is outside the application directory. The secrets will only be vulnerable if the attacker gains shell access to your Linux server.
Set the environment variables within /etc/rc.local (do not include the <> characters):
export SOME_LOGIN=<username>
export SOME_PASS=<password>
To see the value of an environment variable, use one of the following commands in the Linux shell:
printenv MY_VAR
echo $MY_VAR
To access those environment variables within Rails, use the following syntax:
Inside .rb files or at the rails console
ENV['MY_VAR']
Inside .yml files:
<%= ENV['MY_VAR'] %>
For anyone still having this issue, figaro now has an easy method in setting the production variables in heroku. Just run:
$ figaro heroku:set -e production
ryzalyusoff.
For Unix
You can use LINUX ENV in rails application.
# .env
GITHUB_SECRET_KEY=SECRET
TWITTER_ACCESS_KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXX
# in rails code
puts ENV["TWITTER_ACCESS_KEY"] # => SECRET
Create .env files for local machine and your production server. Export environment variables like this(on server with ssh):
export GITHUB_SECRET_KEY="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
Anyway, storing keys in config - bad idea. Just add .env.example, others keys configs add to .gitignore. Goodluck.
Example with Rails
For Windows
Syntax
SET variable
SET variable=string
SET /A "variable=expression"
SET "variable="
SET /P variable=[promptString]
SET "
Key
variable : A new or existing environment variable name e.g. _num
string : A text string to assign to the variable.
expression : Arithmetic expression
Windows CMD
I believe we should not push a secret file on git.
To ignore such file use gitignore file and push other code on the git.
On the server side just copy the secret file and create a symlink for that file.
You can find demo here http://www.elabs.se/blog/57-handle-secret-credentials-in-ruby-on-rails
You can set your environment variables in production in the same way, you do it for local system. However, there are couple of gems, which make it easier to track and push to production. Have a look at figaro. This will help you in setting up and deployment of env vars.
You can do this with figaro gem
or in rails 4 there is a file named secret.yml in config folder where you can define your environment variables this file is by default in .gitignore file.For production you need to manually copy that file to server for security reason so that your sensitive information is not available to any one
First create your variable like:
MY_ENV_VAR="this is my var"
And then make it global:
export MY_ENV_VAR
You can check if the process succeeded with:
printenv
Or:
echo MY_ENV_VAR
I have an app being developed on github. I want to opensource it. Currently we use a capistrano script to deploy to our staging & production servers.
I am trying to figure out how we can put our config files in a separate repo, and still use capistrano to execute one touch deploys. The goal is that we can open up our repo for anyone to use.
You have some options.
Use environment variables: You can set environment variables at both your local and production machines. In your app you'll read these vars by doing: <%= ENV['my_var'] %>. Doing this you can commit your app to a public repo without worrying about expose sensitive information like passwords and keys. For example, set a db_password environment var to store your database password and in your database.yml you could read it doing: password: <%= ENV['db_password'] %>
You can use gems link dotenv (https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv) or figaro (https://github.com/laserlemon/figaro): By using these gems you won't need to set environment variables manually on your machines, you will define them in a .env file instead. You'll be able to read them the same way using <%= ENV['my_var'] %>. You will have to ignore your .env files at your .gitignore and tell capistrano to create the environment variables at your production server reading from your .env file.
Another alternative would be make different config files for development and production and ignore them in your .gitignore. You can store your config production files in a different repo and have it updated on your machine at the time of your deploy. You'll just need to copy your config files from your local machine to the production server (https://coderwall.com/p/wgs6gw/copy-local-files-to-remote-server-using-capistrano-3) after updating the app repo on your production server.
The last alternative is the one I use most (in my case I use ansible in place of capistrano).
If you wanna see an example I have an application and a deployment task currently running in production that you can checkout:
Application: https://github.com/josuelima/bolao
Provisoning and Deployment: https://github.com/josuelima/ansible-sandbox
Hope I made myself clear and you got the idea.
I've enjoyed using Rails on Heroku, and like that I can adjust the configuration property of a Heroku app without having to commit a change to xyz.yml and redeploy.
It would be nice to completely do away with the Yaml config files in my Rails app, and rely as much as possible on storing configuration in ENV. This goes along with the 12-factor config principle.
However, there are some trade-offs in switching from a Yaml-based configuration management to a Heroku/12-factor-based one.
While it's true that a proliferation of deployments (qa, stage, prod, dev, demo, labs) can lead to a proliferation of Yaml files, it's very easy to copy-paste to create a new configuration profile. I don't see a way to 'copy' configuration profiles from one deployment to another in Heroku.
Storing configuration data in the repo means that, in the case of Heroku, deploying and configuring and application are accomplished in a single operation. If I were to move my configuration out of Yaml files and into ENV variables, I would have to configure my application in a separate step after deployment.
Would like to hear from people who have used 12-factor style configuration in their private applications, and how they have managed lots of configuration variables across lots of deployments.
How do you quickly configure a new deployment?
Where do you keep your authoritative source of configuration variables, if not the repo? How do you distribute it among developers?
Thanks!
What I typically use is Yaml using the ENV and provide defaults. For instance, YAML can be ERB'ed happily to include your ENV vars:
foo:
var: ENV["MY_CONFIG"] || "default_value"
You just need to make sure that you load the Yaml with ERB when you read it:
YAML.load(ERB.new(File.read("#{Rails.root}/config/app_config.yml")).result)
By doing this your code works fine in dev, but also allows you to set config vars in the environment as well.
You can accomplish this relatively easy with some simple shell scripts, iterate existing variables via heroku config or heroku release:info v99, and then set heroku config:set k=v --app
But if its a problem/pain/friction perhaps you have too much inside your env var configuration.
A bit of a late answer, but I believe this is what you are looking for.
I developed a gem called settei, allowing you to use YAML files to configure the app. However the gem will serialize the YAML file as one environment variable during deploy. This way one get the best of both worlds: YAML for ease of management/creating derivative environment, and ENV for 12-factor compliance.
I have a number of Rails apps hosted on GitHub. They are all currently private, and I often will deploy them from their GitHub repository. I'd like to be able to make some of them open source, just like the ones you can find on http://opensourcerails.com.
My question is: How can I make these repositories public without giving away super secret credentials?
For example, I can look in /config/initializers/cookie_verification_secret.rb and see the cookie secret for nearly every one of them. I don't understand how this is acceptable. Are these users all changing these values in their deploy environments somehow?
Some users even expose their AWS secret and key! Others will instead set their AWS secret to something like:
ENV['aws-secret']
although I'm not sure at what point they're setting that value.
So, what are the best practices for open sourcing your Rails app without compromising your app's security.
I recently went through this with one of my own apps. My solution was to store anything secret in a git-ignored YAML config file, and then to access that file using a simple class in the initializers directory. The config file is stored in the 'shared' folder for the Capistrano deployment and copied to config at each deploy.
Config store: http://github.com/tsigo/jugglf/blob/master/config/initializers/juggernaut.rb
Example usage: https://github.com/tsigo/jugglf/blob/6b91baae72fbe4b1f7efa2759bb472541546f7cf/config/initializers/session_store.rb
You may also want to remove from source control all history of the file that used these secret values. Here's a guide for doing this in Git that I used: http://help.github.com/removing-sensitive-data/
If you're using foreman, put an .env file in the root of your app. (foreman docs)
.env will have
AWS_SECRET=xxx
AWS_ACCESS=yyy
Then when you need to use the keys, insert:
ENV['AWS_SECRET']
ENV['AWS_ACCESS']
Though it's important that you don't commit this .env to your version control. So if you're using git, add the .env to your .gitignore.
Bonus round! - Heroku
If deploying to Heroku, these environment variables need to be configured in the Heroku environment, too. There are two options:
Manually add the keys through the heroku config:add command
Use the heroku-config gem to synchronize your local environment variables, both ways.
Not storing any secret value at all. At any point in the history of a Git repo.
Those values should be stored elsewhere, leaving only template config files versioned, along with a script able:
to read the right values from the external repo
and build the final config file complete (with the secret values in it)
By keeping the tow set of data separate (sources on one side, secret values on the other), you can then open source the sources repo without comprising any secrets.
I actually took a hint from your question, using ENV.
I had three different secret values that I didn't want made available. They're the app's secret token of course, and Twitter's consumer key and secret. In my secret token initializer:
KinTwit::Application.config.secret_token = ENV['SECRET_TOKEN']
Twitter.consumer_key = ENV['CONSUMER_KEY']
Twitter.consumer_secret = ENV['CONSUMER_SECRET']
I'm hosting my project on Heroku, so I added these as configuration variables to Heroku.
[03:07:48] [william#enterprise ~/dev/rwc/kintwit]$ heroku config:add CONSUMER_KEY=ub3rs3cr3tk3y
Adding config vars and restarting app... done, v7
CONSUMER_KEY => ub3rs3cr3tk3y
[03:08:40] [william#enterprise ~/dev/rwc/kintwit]$ heroku config:add CONSUMER_SECRET=ub3rs3cr3tk3y
Adding config vars and restarting app... done, v8
CONSUMER_SECRET => ub3rs3cr3tk3y
[03:08:57] [william#enterprise ~/dev/rwc/kintwit]$ heroku config:add SECRET_TOKEN=ub3rs3cr3tk3y
Adding config vars and restarting app... done, v9
SECRET_TOKEN => ub3rs3cr3tk3y
Now, the values are ready on my next push. But, what if you aren't using Heroku? I'm obviously not an expert on every single rails deployment (jeesh, not even a Heroku pro), but an example of this would be doing a db:migrate for testing.
$ RAILS_ENV=test rake db:migrate
The KEY=value pair before the command sets the environment variable, so running this command, echo ENV['RAILS_ENV'] would print test. So however this is set up in your environment is how you would do it. But, the environment variables aren't in your code, so that's the trick.
[EDIT - The following method has the annoyance of having to switch to the Production branch to run "rails server" in order to include necessary cookies. Thus, making edits while the server is difficult... and I'm still looking for a good solution]
After further investigation, I think the solution I was looking for was to exclude anything that stored a secret value from my Git repo's master branch (just as #VonC said). But instead of then reading from those files in a separate repo, I simply create a new "production" branch and add them to that.
This way they're excluded from Master and I can push that to Github or some other public repo just fine. When I'm ready to deploy, I can checkout the Production branch and merge Master into it and deploy Production.
I need to be able to do this because Heroku and other hosts require a single git repo to be pushed to their servers.
More information here:
http://groups.google.com/group/heroku/browse_thread/thread/d7b1aecb42696568/26d5249204c70574