Reading in variables from a file in Ruby
environment-variables, file, ruby
Solution
It sounds like you should provide a file example for the user/admin to modify for their personal environment, and then populate the environment from that, while avoiding, perhaps, having that file with the sensitive information in a repository. Note: per file security is going to be addressed by where the file is located and your operating system, and server software.
If this is the case, then you can provide a file that holds a template of the kind of things that you would require from the administrator/user of the program you are configuring.
Ruby has the `ENV` constant that acts like a `Hash` and holds the environment of the shell you are using.
As an example, there is a file called environment.rb.sample that gets shared with anyone, publicly. It has instructions and holds the template that users can modify freely, with instructions to copy the file to `environment.rb`. The sample file looks like this:
# environment.rb.sample
# Copy this file to environment.rb and change the name and password to your credentials
ENV['temp_user_name'] = 'Foo Bar'
ENV['temp_password'] = 'Dazz Kezz
The file is then copied to this, perhaps:
# environment.rb
ENV['temp_user_name'] = 'Joe Admin'
ENV['temp_password'] = 'Super Secure Password'
The file that loads this and uses it is just a Ruby file that is freely modified by the user/administrator of the software, and looks like this and is also shared publicly.
# load_environment
require './environment'
puts ENV['temp_user_name']
puts ENV['temp_password']
This loads the file and uses the `ENV` that is a globally scoped constant for the application.
The file permissions are then managed by the user/administrator of the system and secured like any other sensitive information on their system. The sensitive file should also be listed in the repository's ignore mechanism. It should never be made public.
Problem
Is there a way to read in a file of environment variables? In bash I have a file env.sh that I can use env.sh ``` foo="bar" ``` bash file ``` set -a source env.sh ``` This would allow me to just use foo as if I had delcared it in the ruby script. Also is it there a way to make sure that this file is unreadable so that passwords could be stored in this file?