I am setting up a redirection through SendGrid for the mails sent by my rails application.
However I am not really satisfied with the way I'm told to store the credentials.
As it is specified there, they suggest to overwrite ActionMailers defaults in the config/environment.rb file. I've found out that my predecessor created a initializers/smtp.rb file where he defined the previous settings, but by discovering this file, I discovered the SMTP password...
If I modify any of these files, anuone having access to the git repository will have access to the credentials (including the front-end and back-end freelances we work with).
I was thinking of creating a file that would stay on the server's shared folder (like the database.yml file) and that would be symlinked to the app each time we deploy thanks to capistrano.
What do you think of it? Would it be okay to just move this initializers/smtp.rb to the server's shared folder and symlink it when deploying?
My suggestion (what I've seen done):
Move API keys and sensitive info into a yml file under config/.
Load this yml file into a variable, for instance
KEYS = YAML::load(File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/config.yml"))
Voila.
Also, when putting your code up on GitHub for example, this config.yml would be something you add to the .gitignore. Instead, make a config-example.yml and tell your developers to get their own keys and passwords and such, storing them in their local config.yml.
Environmental variables are the best way if you're on *nix
Stick your variables in .bashrc file like so:
// no need for quotation marks
export GMAIL_USER=my_gmail_user_name#gmail.com
export GMAIL_PASSWORD=my_gmail_password
And call them in your smtp initializer like so:
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
:user_name => ENV['GMAIL_USER'],
:password => ENV['GMAIL_PASSWORD']
}
Restart bash and your rails app. All should work. Heroku have a good article on how to use env variables on their network.
Related
There are several posts ans Stack Overflow questions about how to manage API tokens on the web, but I see a lot of people repeat what they read somewhere else, often with contradictions...
How do you deal with API Tokens, secrets and the like ?
Here's what I have read so far using 3 different gems
secrets.yml
Introduced with Rails 4.1, then updated to encrypted secrets around rails 5
When initially released on rails 4, they were (or were not ?) meant to be pushed on repositories. However I often saw examples using environment variables for production
# config/secrets.yml
development:
secret_key_base: super_long_secret_key_for_development
...
production:
secret_key_base: <%= ENV["SECRET_KEY_BASE"] %>
...
And at this point someone asked "Why do we use ENV for production ?". A legit question back then, often answered "We don't want production token to be hard coded in the application" (hence how it is not clear anymore if the secrets should have been committed or not).
Later, with Rails 5, secrets became encrypted with a master key, so the encrypted secrets.yml file could be committed to the repository, but then the problem remained the same with the master key used to read the secrets.
PROs:
Rails convention.
Easy deploy with capistrano-secrets gem and cap [stage] setup (and it only deploys stage secrets nice) or similar gems
YML data structure (array/hash ok) + can use Ruby code via ERB
With encrypted secrets since rails 5, easy to collaborate/share the secrets
CONs:
Need to use Rails.application.secrets.xxx
Many services like AWS still read from ENV to automatically setup their gems/services
Is not the 12 factors way (or is it ?)
Quite new, so not really used yet ?
If using encrypted secrets, need to manage the master key
Bkeepers dotenv
Simply defining a .env file at the root that is read by Rails on startup
Plugins like capistrano-env allow to easily inject environment specific ENV on servers, and secrets can still must be managed using .env.staging, .env.production
PROs
ENV is in 12factor rules
3.5k stars... maybe not for nothing ?
the dotenv approach is now available on almost all other languages (JS, Go, etc)
Recent versions allow reusing variables (API_ROOT=X, SOME_ENDPOINT=${X}/endpoint)
CONs
No Ruby interpolation (unless extra code is added to parse the .env with the ERB templating engine for example)
limited to string-string key/val
Figaro
Some sort of hybrid secrets/ENV. With 12factors/Rails/Heroku in mind, but in the end doesn't seem better than the rest...
From the above and the rest I didn't write, it would seem like secrets.yml would be a great winner if those secrets were put in ENV instead (and tbh I feel lazy about writing Rails.Application.secrets each time).
So, suppose I start a quite new Rails app, and also based on your experience. Which one would you choose ?
(My particular stack uses AWS + Capistrano, no Heroku)
I personally think that the "right" approach depends on your environment.
In my case, I have servers which are managed by IT and I don't have access to the vhost or anything else to easily set environment variables. Because of this, I commit a secrets.yml file which doesn't contain the production stanza, then set up Capistrano to add this file to shared_files. On each server, I add the file.
If I had easy access the the vhost, and I was managing the server vhosts with Puppet, Chef, Ansible, or similar, I would use the environment variable approach like the default secrets.yml file.
Your case with AWS appears to be the latter. Ultimately, either option is fine. There is little downside to committing the secrets.yml file without a production stanza.
First, all three methods can be 12-factor compatible. It is compatible if you pass the config value by ENV variable, instead of copying one file to the server first.
My thoughts are each of these solutions:
Rails secrets
Developers are forced to go 12-factor, either manually set it on production server, or have another file on local machine and then pass it as ENV every time during deploy. (Didn't know about capistrano-secrets, it probably handles this)
(I think what you said in CON #2 and #3 are the opposite to secret.yml solution)
The accessor is also quite long as you mentioned.
dotenv
It does not encourage 12-factor, and was not originally designed for production env anyways. Either you write code to pass its value as ENV to production during deploy (making it 12 factor compatible), or you copy your .env.production file to the production server.
Also it forces you to use the flat key:value configuration. No nesting.
Figaro
Though it uses YAML, it does not allow nested hash.
It is 12 factor compatible, e.g. it includes code to transfer the config to heroku.
My Solution
I wrote a gem, in which settings are stored in gitignored YAML file. Nesting is allowed. When accessing some value, do Setting.dig(:fb,:api).
It provides mechanism for 12-factor app deploy, by serializing the whole YAML file into a string and pass it to production as ENV.
I no longer have to distinguish between secret config and non-secret config. They are in one place and secret by default. I get benefit of 12-factor app while using easy to namespace YAML files.
I am working on a rails application, on which I need to send an issue on github if a certain process takes place. To send a post request, I need to use my github username and password. I can't use my password in open. What should I do?
I know something about secrets.yml file in rails config but I can't even put my password there. I will put my app on github and anyone can hence access. How should I use secrets.yml file to store my password and use it in my rails app?
2 options:
Set it as an environmental variable. How you exactly do so is highly dependent on which operating system you use. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do so and how to access it from a Rails application. These variables are visible only locally and won't be seen when you push your code to GitHub.
Add your secrets.yml to your .gitignore file. If you don't have a .gitignore file, create one in the root directory of your project. Then, simply add secrets.yml to that file. Once you do that, git will forever ignore that file in any commit, push, etc. and won't show up if you push your code to GitHub. However, if you already have a secrets.yml file and it has been tracked previously by git, you need to remove that file's history. Details on how to do so can be found here.
You shouldn't commit the secret.yml to your git repository. A secret.yml that includes production secrets should only exist on the servers (and only be accessible to server administrators).
Furthermore you might want to use an API token instead of your username and password, because API tokens are easier to change.
This is probably a good solution for you.
https://github.com/attr-encrypted/attr_encrypted
You can encrypt the password and save it to the db assigned to the user (if you have one of course).
If you don't have a user then you'll be stuck with environment variables and secrets.yml or another similar solution
Is it ok to store DB password for the production environment in the "config/database.yml" file? Or is there any more correct way to do it (maybe environment variables)?
Thanks in advance.
It's not a good idea! One main reason is that the config/database.yml file will probably be included in some kind of source control, like a git repository. Even if the repo is private currently, you can't know for sure it won't be made public in the future and then you would have a problem on your hands!
In addition, if anyone ever gains read-access to your application's files or just a copy of your application's source, they now have your database password.
A typical solution is to set an environment variable like you suggested and then read it in the .yml file:
password: <%= ENV['DATABASE_PASSWORD'] %>
If you're using a PaaS like Heroku, this is the standard way to do things. But even this isn't a perfect solution, so evaluate your options carefully.
I read the solution at: Best way to create custom config options for my Rails app? which seems promising. i.e. storing development and production credentials in config/config.yml. But then I thought.
If we have a team of developers, and interns, they would be exposed to this file with all production credentials. The consensus, is to trust your team. But honest human mistakes do happen: computer left on / unlocked, trojans, friends using the computer, etc.
I know Heroku has something called config vars + foreman. However, for things like AWS, its not as simple as creating a new access key and delegating that access key to a specific bucket. It doesn't work like that. The only way I can think of is to create a new AWS account solely for development purposes. If I go this route, I would have to create development accounts for other similar 3rd party services too.
Is there an alternative option?
I use SettingsLogic.
I create two models for that : Settings and PrivateSettings. And I separate the settings : passwords, token, api key... in PrivateSettings and the rest in Settings.
For Settings :
class Settings < Settingslogic
source "#{Rails.root}/config/settings.yml"
namespace Rails.env
end
The settings.yml file is stored in Git.
For PrivateSettings :
class PrivateSettings < Settingslogic
source "#{Rails.root}/config/private_settings.yml"
namespace Rails.env
end
I store a private_settings-sample.yml file in Git, to keep an example in sync. The production data are obvioulsy not populated. A dev clone the repo, and rename it to private_settings.yml to be able to work.
config/private_settings.yml is also in .gitignore to avoid an inclusion by mistake.
Going to prod, I use a specific task in Capistrano to create a symbolic link to the proper private_settings.yml file stored in the server (in a dir config next to current, releases and shared) :
namespace :deploy do
task :config_settings do
run "cd #{current_path}/config && ln -sf #{shared_path}/../config/private_settings.yml private_settings.yml"
end
end
after "deploy:update", "deploy:config_settings"
i'm not sure if you can prevent developers from knowing the password. even if you have completely separated service that provides you the correct credentials/keys, developers can always debug the working application, add code that logs passwords etc. those are people you have to trust. the only way i see it possible is to have admins that puts required keys on the classpath and always do code reviews to prevent all attempts of reading the credentials at runtime
My personal rails project uses a few API's for which I store the API keys/secrets in config/environments/production.yml and development.yml as global variables. I now want to push this project to github for others to use, but I don't want them to have those bits of sensitive data. I also don't want this file in .gitignore because it's required for the app to run. I've considered putting them in the DB somewhere, but am hoping to find a better solution.
TLDR: Use environment variables!
I think #Bryce's comment offers an answer, which I'll just flush out. It seems one approach Heroku recommends is to use environment variables to store sensitive information (API key strings, database passwords). So survey your code and see in which you have sensitive data. Then create environment variables (in your .bashrc file for example) that store the sensivite data values. For example for your database:
export MYAPP_DEV_DB_DATABASE=myapp_dev
export MYAPP_DEV_DB_USER=username
export MYAPP_DEV_DB_PW=secret
Now, in your local box, you just refer to the environment variables whenever you need the sensitive data. For example in database.yml :
development:
adapter: mysql2
encoding: utf8
reconnect: false
database: <%= ENV["MYAPP_DEV_DB_DATABASE"] %>
pool: 5
username: <%= ENV["MYAPP_DEV_DB_USER"] %>
password: <%= ENV["MYAPP_DEV_DB_PW"] %>
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
I think database.yml gets parsed just at the app's initialization or restart so this shouldn't impact performance. So this would solve it for your local development and for making your repository public. Stripped of sensitive data, you can now use the same repository for the public as you do privately. It also solves the problem if you are on a VPS. Just ssh to it and set up the environment variables on your production host as you did in your development box.
Meanwhile, if your production setup involves a hands off deployment where you can't ssh to the production server, like Heroku's does, you need to look at how to remotely set up environment variables. For Heroku this is done with heroku config:add. So, per the same article, if you had S3 integrated into your app and you had the sensitive data coming in from the environment variables:
AWS::S3::Base.establish_connection!(
:access_key_id => ENV['S3_KEY'],
:secret_access_key => ENV['S3_SECRET']
)
Just have Heroku create environment variables for it:
heroku config:add S3_KEY=8N022N81 S3_SECRET=9s83159d3+583493190
Another pro of this solution is that it's language neutral, not just Rails. Works for any app since they can all acquire the environment variables.
How about this...
Create a new project and check it into GitHub with placeholder values in the production.yml and development.yml files.
Update .gitignore to include production.yml and development.yml.
Replace the placeholder values with your secrets.
Now you can check your code into GitHub without compromising your secrets.
And anyone can clone your repo without any extra steps to create missing files (they'll just replace the placeholder values as you did).
Does that meet your goals?
They're probably best put in initializers (config/initializers/api.yaml) though I think what you've got cooked up is fine. Add the actual keys to your .gitignore file and run git rm config/environments/production.yml to remove that sensitive data from your repo. Fair warning, it will remove that file too so back it up first.
Then, just create a config/environments/production.yml.example file next to your actual file with the pertinent details but with the sensitive data left out. When you pull it out to production, just copy the file without the .example and substitute the appropriate data.
Use environment variables.
In Ruby, they're accessible like so:
ENV['S3_SECRET']
Two reasons:
The values will not make it into source control.
"sensitive data" aka passwords tend to change on a per-environment basis anyways. e.g. you should be using different S3 credentials for development vs production.
Is this a best practice?
Yes: http://12factor.net/config
How do I use them locally?
foreman and dotenv are both easy. Or, edit your shell.
How do I use them in production?
Largely, it depends. But for Rails, dotenv is an easy win.
What about platform-as-a-service?
Any PaaS should give you a way to set them. Heroku for example: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars
Doesn't this make it more complicated to set up a new developer for the project?
Perhaps, but it's worth it. You can always check a .env.sample file into source control with some example data in it. Add a note about it to your project's readme.
Rails 4.1 has now a convention for it. You store this stuff in secrets.yml. So you don't end up with some global ENV calls scattered across Your app.
This yaml file is like database.yml erb parsed, so you are still able to use ENV calls here. In that case you can put it under version control, it would then serve just as a documentation which ENV vars has to be used. But you also can exlcude it from version control and store the actual secrets there. In that case you would put some secrets.yml.default or the like into the public repo for documentation purposes.
development:
s3_secret: 'foo'
production:
s3_secret: <%= ENV['S3_SECRET']%>
Than you can access this stuff under
Rails.application.secrets.s3_secret
Its discussed in detail at the beginning of this Episode