Integrate EnvKey with your Ruby or Ruby On Rails projects to keep api keys, credentials, and other configuration securely and automatically in sync for developers and servers.
In your Gemfile:
gem 'envkey'
If you haven't already, download and install EnvKey from our website, then create a new org. Next, follow the ~1 minute integration quickstart to init an app with a .envkey
file (for connecting development) or generate a server ENVKEY
(for connecting a server).
If you're using Rails, that's all you need to do. In plain Ruby, you need to require envkey at the entry point of your application.
require 'envkey'
Now all your EnvKey variables will be available on ENV
.
The gem will throw an error if an ENVKEY
is missing or invalid.
The envkey gem will not overwrite existing environment variables or additional variables set in the .env
file you loaded your ENVKEY
from. This can be convenient for customizing environments that otherwise share the same configuration. You can also use branches or local overrides for this purpose.
The envkey gem caches your encrypted config in development so that you can still use it while offline. Your config will still be available (though possibly not up-to-date) the next time you lose your internet connection. If you do have a connection available, envkey will always load the latest config. Your cached encrypted config is stored in $HOME/.envkey/cache
For caching purposes, the gem assumes you're in development mode if either ENV["RAILS_ENV"]
or ENV["RACK_ENV"]
is "development"
or "test"
.
You can also turn on caching by setting a ENVKEY_SHOULD_CACHE=1
environment variable when running your app (not in your EnvKey config):
ENVKEY_SHOULD_CACHE=1 ruby your_app.rb
Using a language-specific library like this one is the easiest and fastest method of integrating with EnvKey. That said, the envkey-source executable, which this library wraps, provides additional options and functionality when used directly from the command line. If you need additional flexibility and it works for your use case, consider using envkey-source directly.
On a stripped down OS like Alpine Linux, you may get an x509: certificate signed by unknown authority
error when attempting to load your config. You can fix it by ensuring that the ca-certificates
dependency is installed. On Alpine you'll want to run:
apk add --no-cache ca-certificates
For more on EnvKey in general:
Read the docs.
Read the integration quickstart.
Read the security and cryptography overview.
Post an issue, start a discussion, or email us: [email protected].