How to securely pass credentials in python?

Question

Passing login credentials into a python script for a website. However, I want the credentials to not be stored as plaintext in the .py files. How can I securely store the login credentials in a .py file so it can use them to login?

Answer 1

You can use an environmental file in your project root directory and load in the variables from this file during runtime, in Python you can do this with the python-dotenv package.

$ pip install python-dotenv

credentials.py File:

import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv, find_dotenv
load_dotenv(find_dotenv()) # Load the .env file.

# Fetch variables from the .env file.
account_username = os.getenv("ACCOUNT_USERNAME")
account_password = os.getenv("ACCOUNT_PASSWORD")

.env File:

ACCOUNT_USERNAME = SomeUser
ACCOUNT_PASSWORD = somestrongpassword123

And from there, you can use the account_username and account_password as normal to authenticate and login to the website.

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Security notice: Be sure to add the .env file to your .gitignore so you avoid pushing your environmental file to version control.