python-configuration-management

Quick start

This package features an opinionated, python configuration management system, focused on combining both secret and non-secret keys in the same configuration file. The values for secret keys are encrypted and can be committed to the repo, but since each key is separated on a line-by-line basis, merge conflicts shouldn't cause much trouble.

Install

pip install python-configuration-management

cli

Generate a key

In a terminal, enter:

pycm generate-key

Follow the instructions printed to the console. For example, if you're setting up a production configuration, make a file called .env-production in the root of your project. Inside of it, save the key generated above to a variable called ENC_KEY.

Upsert a secret

To insert or update a secret, enter:

pycm upsert --environment <your environment>

And follow the prompts.

Insert a non-secret

Simply open the .yml file for the generated stage (the naming scheme is config-<environment>.yaml), and insert a row. It should look like this:

USERNAME: whatsup1994 # non-secret
PASSWORD:
  secret: true
  value: gAAAAABf2_kxEgWXQzJ0SlRmDy6lbXe-d3dWD68W4aM26yiA0EO2_4pA5FhV96uMWCLwpt7N6Y32zXQq-gTJ3sREbh1GOvNh5Q==

Manually editing the file

You can change the values of non-secrets by hand, as well as the keynames, but clearly you must not change the value of secrets by hand, as they're encrypted. Changing the order of any of the keys is perfectly fine.

Print secrets to the console

To show the decrypted values of all the secrets in the console, enter:

pycm reveal --environment <your-environment>

Re-encrypt a config file

To re-encrypt all secret values for a given environment's config file, pass

pycm reencrypt --environment <your-environment> --new-key <your-new-key>

If you do not provide a key, a new one will be generated for you.

Extras

In the root of your project, you can create a file called config-required.json.

The JSON object can be a list or a dictionary. This is useful for validating the presence of your keys on start-up.

Using the config in your python code

There are two ways to use this library. You can either have a dotenv file with your ENC_KEY, or you can place the ENC_KEY in your environment variables. If you use a dotenv, make sure the file follows this naming scheme: .env-[environment].

As for accessing the config, if you don't mind a little magic, you can use inject_config.

# settings.py
from pycm import inject_config

# development is the environment name
inject_config("development", sys.modules[__name__])

If you want more verbosity, you can import the following function which will return the config as a normalized dictionary that's flat and has all secrets decrypted.

# settings.py
from pycm import get_config

# config = {"USERNAME": "helloworld", "PASSWORD": "im decrypted"}
config = get_config("development")

USERNAME = config["USERNAME"]
# ...

Advanced usage

All file paths within the libary are relative to root by default. To change this behaviour, set an environment variable called PYCM_ROOT which stores the relative path to the root of your project (where your .env-[environment] and config-[environment].yml files are stored).

Running tests

You'll need the following encryption key to run tests

rj10mXFq-JTDlsSa-5GxYzcx4KAF6TQpXWcl1LLbUTU=

This belongs either in your environment variables under ENC_KEY or in .env-test.

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This project uses poetry for dependency management and packaging.