Title: Store API Credentials For Open Source Projects
Slug: store_api_credentials_for_open_source_projects
Summary: Store API Credentials For Open Source Projects
Date: 2016-11-01 12:00
Category: Python
Tags: Basic
Authors: Chris Albon

One issue which repeated comes up is how to manage private API credentials when the project is available on GitHub. This is the method I use for my own projects. I store all credentials in a JSON file and tell gitignore to not upload that file. Then when I am running that code locally, load the API credentials from the JSON file.

Preliminaries



In [2]:

    
import json

Step 1: Create a JSON with the API credentials



In [10]:

    
credentials = {'access_secret': '392n39d93',
               'access_token': 'sdf424f',
               'consumer_key': 'sdf3223',
               'consumer_secret': 'dsf2344'}



In [11]:

    
with open('credentials.json', 'w') as f:
    json.dump(credentials, f, ensure_ascii=False)

Step 2: Add File To gitignore

Follow the instructions here.

Here is an example of a good gitignore file.

Step 3: Retrieve The Credentials From The JSON File

This step should be the one done inside your project or script.

Load JSON File



In [12]:

    
# Import API Keys
with open('credentials.json') as creds:    
    credentials = json.load(creds)

Retrieve The Credentials



In [13]:

    
credentials['consumer_key']









    Out[13]:





'sdf3223'