Is it possible to set ENV variables for rails development environment in my code

Question

I know that I can set my ENV variables in bash via  export admin password    secret    But is there a way to do it in my rails source code somewhere  My first attempt was something like this in environment development rb  ENV  admin password      secret    But it didn t work  Is there a way to do this

User · Answer

I think the best way is to store them in some yml file and then load that file using this command in intializer file

APP_CONFIG = YAML.load_file("#{Rails.root}/config/CONFIG.yml")[Rails.env].to_hash

you can easily access environment related config variables.

Your Yml file key value structure:

development:
  app_key: 'abc'
  app_secret: 'abc'

production:
  app_key: 'xyz'
  app_secret: 'ghq'

User · Answer

Never hardcode sensitive information  account credentials  passwords  etc    Instead  create a file to store that information as environment variables  key value pairs   and exclude that file from your source code management system  For example  in terms of Git  source code management system   exclude that file by adding it to  gitignore   -bash gt  echo   config app environment variables rb   gt  gt   gitignore     config app environment variables rb  ENV  HTTP USER      devuser  ENV  HTTP PASS      devpass    As well  add the following lines to  config environment rb  between the require line  and the Application initialize line     Load the app s custom environment variables here  so that they are loaded before environments   rb app environment variables   File join Rails root   config    app environment variables rb   load app environment variables  if File exists  app environment variables    That s it   As the comment above says  by doing this you will be loading your environment variables before environments   rb  which means that you will be able to refer to your variables inside those files  e g  environments production rb   This is a great advantage over putting your environment variables file inside  config initializers    Inside app environment variables rb there s no need to distinguish environments as far as development or production because you will never commit this file into your source code management system  hence it is for the development context by default  But if you need to set something special for the test environment  or for occasions when you test production mode locally   just add a conditional block below all the other variables   if Rails env test    ENV  HTTP USER      testuser    ENV  HTTP PASS      testpass  end  if Rails env production    ENV  HTTP USER      produser    ENV  HTTP PASS      prodpass  end   Whenever you update app environment variables rb  restart the app server  Assuming you are using the likes of Apache Passenger or rails server   -bash gt  touch tmp restart txt   In your code  refer to the environment variables as follows   def authenticate   authenticate or request with http basic do  username  password      username    ENV  HTTP USER    amp  amp  password    ENV  HTTP PASS     end end   Note that inside app environment variables rb you must specify booleans and numbers as strings  e g  ENV  SEND MAIL      false  not just false  and ENV  TIMEOUT      30  not just 30   otherwise you will get the errors can t convert false into String and can t convert Fixnum into String  respectively   Storing and sharing sensitive information  The final knot to tie is  how to share this sensitive information with your clients and or partners  For the purpose of business continuity  i e  when you get hit by a falling star  how will your clients and or partners resume full operations of the site    your clients and or partners need to know all the credentials required by your app  Emailing Skyping these things around is insecure and leads to disarray  Storing it in shared Google Docs is not bad  if everyone uses https   but an app dedicated to storing and sharing small titbits like passwords would be ideal   How to set environment variables on Heroku  If you have a single environment on Heroku   -bash gt  heroku config add HTTP USER  herouser  -bash gt  heroku config add HTTP USER  heropass    If you have multiple environments on Heroku   -bash gt  heroku config add HTTP USER  staguser  --remote staging -bash gt  heroku config add HTTP PASS  stagpass  --remote staging  -bash gt  heroku config add HTTP USER  produser  --remote production -bash gt  heroku config add HTTP PASS  prodpass  --remote production   Foreman and  env  Many developers use Foreman  installed with the Heroku Toolbelt  to run their apps locally  as opposed to using the likes of Apache Passenger or rails server   Foreman and Heroku use Procfile for declaring what commands are run by your application  so the transition from local dev to Heroku is seamless in that regard  I use Foreman and Heroku in every Rails project  so this convenience is great  But here s the thing   Foreman loads environment variables stored in   env via dotenv but unfortunately dotenv essentially only parses the file for key value pairs  those pairs don t become variables right there and then  so you can t refer to already set variables  to keep things DRY   nor can you do  Ruby  in there  as noted above with the conditionals   which you can do in  config app environment variables rb  For instance  in terms of keeping things DRY I sometimes do stuff like this   ENV  SUPPORT EMAIL    Company Support  lt support company com gt   ENV  MAILER DEFAULT FROM     ENV  SUPPORT EMAIL   ENV  MAILER DEFAULT TO       ENV  SUPPORT EMAIL     Hence  I use Foreman to run my apps locally  but I don t use its  env file for loading environment variables  rather I use Foreman in conjunction with the  config app environment variables rb approach described above

User · Answer

Script for loading of custom  env file  Add the following lines to  config environment rb  between the require line  and the Application initialize line     Load the app s custom environment variables here  so that they are loaded before environments   rb  app environment variables   File join Rails root   config    local environment env   if File exists  app environment variables    lines   File readlines app environment variables    lines each do  line      line chomp      next if line empty  or line 0             parts   line partition         raise  Wrong line    line  in   app environment variables   if parts last empty      ENV parts first    parts last   end end   And config local environment env  you will want to  gitignore it  will look like     This is ignored comment DATABASE URL mysql2   user psw 0 0 0 3307 database RACK ENV development    Based on solution of  user664833

User · Answer

The way I am trying to do this in my question actually works     environment development rb  ENV  admin password      secret     I just had to restart the server  I thought running reload  in rails console would be enough but I also had to restart the web server   I am picking my own answer because I feel this is a better place to put and set the ENV variables

User · Answer

The system environment and rails  environment are different things  ENV let s you work with the rails  environment  but if what you want to do is to change the system s environment in runtime you can just surround the command with backticks     ruby code  export admin password  secret     more ruby code

User · Answer

As an aside to the solutions here  there are cleaner alternatives if you re using certain development servers   With Heroku s Foreman  you can create per-project environment variables in a  env file   ADMIN PASSOWRD  secret    With Pow  you can use a  powenv file   export ADMIN PASSOWRD  secret

User · Answer

Update   While the solution under  old answer  will work for general problems  this section is to answer your specific question after clarification from your comment   You should be able to set environment variables exactly like you specify in your question  As an example  I have a Heroku app that uses HTTP basic authentication     app controllers application controller rb class ApplicationController  lt  ActionController  Base   protect from forgery   before filter  authenticate    def authenticate     authenticate or request with http basic do  username  password        username    ENV  HTTP USER    amp  amp  password    ENV  HTTP PASS       end   end end    config initializers dev environment rb unless Rails env production    ENV  HTTP USER      testuser    ENV  HTTP PASS      testpass  end   So in your case you would use  unless Rails env production    ENV  admin password      secret  end   Don t forget to restart the server so the configuration is reloaded    Old Answer   For app-wide configuration  you might consider a solution like the following   Create a file config application yml with a hash of options you want to be able to access   admin password  something secret allow registration  true facebook    app id  application id here   app secret  application secret here   api key  api key here   Now  create the file config initializers app config rb and include the following   require  yaml   yaml data   YAML  load ERB new IO read File join Rails root   config    application yml     result  APP CONFIG   HashWithIndifferentAccess new yaml data    Now  anywhere in your application  you can access APP CONFIG  admin password   along with all your other data   Note that since the initializer includes ERB new  your YAML file can contain ERB markup

[ruby-on-rails] Is it possible to set ENV variables for rails development environment in my code?

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