mytabru-dotenvenc
v5.1.1
Published
Encrypt and decrypt in-memory at runtime your .env file so you can store sensitive information (passwords etc.) in source control
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@tka85/dotenvenc
NOTE: This is an improved version of the now deprecated dotenvenc.
Are you using .env
and it contains secrets like passwords & tokens?
And are you using dotenv
to expose those secrets as process.env
variables to your app?
Problem: you are exposing the secrets in plain text in your repository and your production system.
Solution: you can now save your .env
encrypted as .env.enc
, then decrypt it during runtime only in memory (never on disk) and transparently get the same functionality as you enjoyed from dotenv
.
Benefits
- Secure!
✔ You can safely commit into your codebase the encrypted
.env.enc
without compromosing your secrets - Secure!! ✔ Your secrets exist unencrypted only in memory during runtime; never on disk
- Secure!!! ✔ Secrets protected with strong encryption (AES-256)
- Handy!
✔ Comes with CLI script
dotenvenc
for easily updating your.env.enc
from your local (uncommitted).env
- Lean!
✔ Still maintain a single dependency but now on
dotenvenc
instead ofdotenv
- Easy!
✔ Transition from
dotenv
replacing a single line of code - Flexible!
✔ Not limited to
.env
and.env.enc
i.e. you can set any custom filenames for the encrypted and unencrypted files - Modern! ✔ Fully re-written in Typescript
Tip
Add .env
in your .gitignore
so your unencrypted secrets are guaranteed to never get committed in your codebase.
Installation
npm i @tka85/dotenvenc
Encryption
You have a .env
(or custom-named unencrypted secrets file) and you will generate a .env.enc
(or custom-named file) which is encrypted and safe to commit.
You can use the handy command-line script dotenvenc
that comes installed with the package. Just run it without arguments to see the help page.
Step 1 (optional)
Convenient option
Save the encryption/decryption password you will be using in the environment variable DOTENVENC_PASS
in your .bashrc
(or .bash_profile
):
export DOTENVENC_PASS='mySuperDuperPassword';
and reload it:
source ~/.bashrc
Upon runtime your app will use this env variable when reading the encrypted .env.enc
to decrypt it and populate your process.env
(see following section Decryption
on how to do this).
But setting this env variable is also helpful for the CLI tool dotenvenc
. If DOTENVENC_PASS
is set, the dotenvenc
script will not prompt you each time to type the password for encryption/decryption.
Secure option
For maximum security, do not save the DOTENVENC_PASS
not even as an environment variable in your .bashrc
. If it is not set, the application will ask for it upon startup before it can proceed to decrypt .env.enc
and populate your process.enc
.
Step 2: encrypt .env
Note: you will have to repeat this step each time you make changes to a secret in your unencrypted .env
and need to reflect it into the encrypted .env.enc
.
If your unencrypted secrets file is .env
and resides at the root of the project, then simply:
./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -e
will prompt you (x2) for an encryption password (unless DOTENVENC_PASS
is set) and proceed to generate an encrypted secrets file .env.enc
.
And if your unencrypted secrets file is not named the default .env
, we have you covered:
./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -e -i /path/to/my/secrets-env-filename
will prompt you (x2) for an encryption password (unless DOTENVENC_PASS
is set) and proceed to generate an encrypted secrets file .env.enc
.
And if you don't want to name the encrypted secrets file .env.enc
, we also have you covered:
./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -e -i /path/to/my/secrets-env-filename -o /another/place/to/my/encrypted-secrets-env-filename
will prompt you (x2) for an encryption password (unless DOTENVENC_PASS
is set) and proceed to generate an encrypted secrets file /another/place/to/my/encrypted-secrets-env-filename
.
Decryption
Let's assume the contents of the .env
that you encrypted into .env.enc
are:
DB_PASS='superDuperPassword'
SECRET_TOKEN='noMoreSecrets'
For all possible decryption scenarios that follow, the principle is:
- If you have set env var
DOTENVENC_PASS
, no additional step is needed - If you have not set env var
DOTENVENC_PASS
, you will be prompted to supply the decryption password before proceeding
You can now populate the process.env
in your app's code as follows:
require('dotenvenc').decrypt();
// From here on your app will have access to the secrets through `process.env.DB_PASS` and `process.env.SECRET_TOKEN`
or in ES6:
import { decrypt } from 'dotenvenc';
decrypt();
// From here on your app will have access to the secrets through `process.env.DB_PASS` and `process.env.SECRET_TOKEN`
If you used a custom encrypted filename:
require('dotenvenc').decrypt({ encryptedFile: './somewhere/.secrets.custom.enc'});
// From here on your app will have access to the secrets through `process.env.DB_PASS` and `process.env.SECRET_TOKEN`
or in ES6:
import { decrypt } from 'dotenvenc';
decrypt({ encryptedFile: './somewhere/.secrets.custom.enc'});
// From here on your app will have access to the secrets through `process.env.DB_PASS` and `process.env.SECRET_TOKEN`
Recovery of unencrypted secrets file
You want to decrypt and view the contents of your encrypted secrets file?
A new team member wants to recreate the .env
upon checkout of the project? (remember that .env
is an unversioned file)
Or you want to recreate the .env
because it got lost or corrupted?
You can use the same handy command-line dotenvenc
you used to initially encrypt your unencrypted .env
secrets file.
Using the script's -d
flag:
./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -d
or if you used custom name instead of the default .env.enc
:
./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -d -i ./somewhere/.secrets.custom.enc
In both cases you will be prompted to provide the password that was used to create the encrypted file (if DOTENVENC_PASS
is not set) and, assuming the password is correct, you will have the contents printed on the screen in the format:
VAR1=VALUE1
VAR2=VALUE2
...
Bonus
You can dump the contents of your encrypted secrets file as shell export
statements.
Using the script's -x
flag:
./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -x -i ./somewhere/.secrets.custom.enc
This will print on console:
export VAR1=VALUE1;
export VAR2=VALUE2;
How is that useful?
Using the shell's eval
in a shell script you can populate your environment dynamically without ever storing the sensitive information on disk.
eval `./node_modules/.bin/dotenvenc -x`
# all commands following in the script will now have access to the env variables
Comments
Anything following a #
sign in the .env
file, is stripped. That means you can have full line comments:
# the whole line is a comments because it start with a "#"
or inline comments:
VAR="a value" # text before the "#" is kept; text following the "#" is stripped
Inspired by
- Keeping passwords in source control
- envenc
- Based on the now deprecated dotenvenc