Adding urls api keys in environment variable in ru

Question

I have a url that I am using in one of the controllers. Is there a better place to put this url? The url uses an API key and I was wondering if there is a better place to add this url and/or api key such that its not added in the controller class code and ergo more editable? If i add it as an environment variable or anything else how do i access it from my controller class? thank you. ITS A RUBY AND RAILS PROJECT

Answer 1

You can add it to application.rb file as

config.service {
   :api_key => 'api_key'
}

Or better yet, add it to development.rb and production.rb files so that you can test it better.

You can access this api_key from controller like

Rails.application.config.service[:api_key]

Answer 2

Using environment variables might be a good idea if you want to keep things like API keys and passwords out of your source code. Accessing them from within your code is done with the ENV object:

my_api_key = ENV['MY_API_KEY']

To use this technique, you need to set up the variables in your environment before launching your app, and how you do this depends on your local setup, and will likely also vary between development and production.

In development, you can simply set the environment vars in your shell, e.g. with bash:

$ export MY_API_KEY=foobar123abc
$ rails s

Now rails will start and have access to this environment variable. You can also set variables for just a single command:

$ MY_API_KEY=foobar123abc rails s

Depending on what the sevice/api is, you could set some of them to default development/test values in config/environments/development.rb (or test.rb):

ENV['MY_API_KEY'] = 'non_secret_api_key_that_can_be_shared_around'

Setting up environment variables in production will depend on how you're deploying your app. Phusion have an article on using environment variables in Passenger if your using that. There's also a useful article on using environment variables with Heroku which is worth a read even if you're not using them for deployment.