3.4 Hiding API Keys with Environment Variables (dotenv) and Pushing Code to GitHub

In this lesson, we will address how to can hide an API key using environment variables and open source the code on GitHub.
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[@Warpgatez]

After years, I still come back to your videos. Doesn't matter which one. I just come back to them. They solve so many issues. When I first discovered you I wasn't working with JS at all. But enjoyed watching your videos. Now I am working with JS. So I am back

[@janetrajkoski1424]

As someone who just started learning to code and my first interview being: "The hell you doing your API key is public", this was a godsend video. Very to the point and clear explanation. Subscribed

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[@hj1916]

It was never boring! Actually, you made this serious topic so fun like magic. Also, I loved the ending credit of the train. Creative idea!!! Thank you so much!!!!

[@PROTOTYPZ]

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[@SaiKumar-vf9lz]

From hiding api keys to adding local source to GitHub ..well summarized things in 10 mins ..great video !

[@MrGreg557]

What a great series man, I'm grateful everyone can use resources like this. Going from knowing almost 0 JS to deploying my app was very satisfying. One update though: if you get this error like me: "npm ERR! Missing script: "start"", add this to the end of your package.json file, before the finishing curly brace: ,"scripts": { "start": "node index.js" },

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[@smashing_data4292]

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I was searching for a video about env file and felt relief when I saw yours

[@Rlc201]

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I was suffering to understand the environment variable and its benefits this video the best explanation I have ever seen.

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[@benSfft]

Thanks a lot ! That's clear and the objectives are so well explained ! I didn't even know that we could code on ecstasy !

[@kingsley3194]

Thank you so much. You saved my day with this explanation

[@Niehde]

Nice video! I've just recently pushed some API keys to Github. Fortunately they have a service that lets you know when you've screwed up.

[@amjedbouhouch7993]

Same 🤣🤣

[@tegaogheneovo5881]

So keep working on my project and when I want to deploy hide all my keys and db names thank you 😁

[@SnobbyLion]

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[@danieloliveira9815]

Typing those command line commands made me feel like a real programmer 😎 Thank you for this awesome playlist!

[@im_chris_ai]

Beautifully explained!

[@220syedrazamehdirizvi7]

U made it so fun to watch ....❤

[@kenfeier5542]

Great tutorial, but I do want to mention one thing. Environmental variables help you hide your sensitive information for version control purposes. If you build a public website and have environmental variables showing on client side, a user can open the debugger and hover over those variables and see the values of them. Make sure that you use these variables on back-end (server) side if you don't want anyone to see their values.

[@leerenae313]

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[@bacanalienigena]

It works amazingly, thanks a million!

[@JanacMeena]

2:00 start 5:30 Create a sample .env Make sure .gitignore has .env listed

[@ousmaneyadely]

Thanks a lot! I was totally stuck with a bug until I watched your video. So clarifying!

[@skrillex15]

Thanks for this playlist. Really helped

[@lorisp186]

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[@sweickel]

Thank you! This is exactly the video and explanation I needed!

[@edwincaceresi.3284]

Thanks! It was very clear!

[@nofacee94]

If your file is called index.js, you can just do `node .` or `node index`

[@noco2605]

Thank you very much for your explanation 😊

[@dennisgonzales9521]

Very engaging! thank you for the lesson.

[@sharadsharma3176]

eagerly waiting for the next video of this series.... I want to know more about the available hosting services for node.

[@drhastings]

Simple and straight to the point thank you👏🏿

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Awesome content and explanation, thanks man!

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Amazing video sir!

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Great presentation. Thank you very much

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BTW you are amazing teacher!

[@hargur4121]

Thanks a lot! This has been a lifesaver

[@ElPatoNaufrago]

incredible video, I spend like 1 year in a College trying to use GitHub as they told me without actually know what I was doing. thank you! Just a question... Can I add to the .env file a private key from firebase?

[@oyetorostephen5010]

THank you! I find this fun to learn

[@GabrielTobing]

Here after learning developers added the api key and people were able to view it in the git history commit before it was published XD

[@nighknight9012]

if you are working on linux you may experience a problem when running the code, "undefined" gets returned, thats because you need to set the env variable yourself. go to bashrc and do export ENV_VARIABLE=VALUE no spaces around the equal and if the VALUE has spaces add quotes around it

[@RayfranRocha]

Spectacular tutorial! Thank you. It's very clear. I wonder if using any browser inspector, can anyone see the API_KEY? Looking inside the code or in the Request to the API message?

[@ncpurge789]

THIS SAVED MY LIFE THANK YOU

[@mohammedraqeeb4392]

Great explanation

[@abigiyatadesse2672]

Thanks so much this is helpful.

[@dreznik]

sheefmahn brilliant series of videos. any videos where you interact with a Database-as-a-Service? SQL or not

[@DieHard88913]

Thank you! this helped me a lot, earned a new sub :D

[@santiagootero3580]

you are the goat, thanks so much

[@techmarinar]

thanx man , this was helpful

[@aham3687]

could continue this series with PWA. This has been popular with web technology in this modern day.

[@LimitlessGamingYoutubeChannel]

Super helpful video!

[@bluemagicuk]

super helpful - thank you!

[@santra528]

Using dotenv package and store the API_KEY in .env file does not completely hide the API_KEY. It is fine for GitHub because someone visiting this repo they wont be able to see the API_KEY. But if the project is deployed in sever then anyone can see the API_KEY from the browser when they visit this particular website. The best way to hide the API_KEY is store it in the backend and make the API calls from the backend only. Only send the response data to the frontend. And to add more security you can set up CORS for the API_KEY so even if someone gets access to the API_KEY they wont be able to send request as the request will be rejected and only the request from the domains mention in the CORS will be able to make successful request using this API_KEY.

[@incandescentbruh]

No one is dumb enough to put the api key in frontend, also the example code in the video is using express js which is run by node js in backend.

[@DigitalMonsters]

Whats the difference between using dotenv and just throwing them in another javascript file that you export from and then adding that file to the gitignore? I could watch the video and most likely get the answer to that question; but in the interest of being one of the earliest comments.... please understand.

[@ridespirals]

kind of the same thing, but environment variables are more common because you can configure them more easily on other host services like heroku, CI systems like Jenkins, you can change then on a command line, lots of other ways.

[@BertMaurau]

Waiting for the actual answer, but like for me, my main reason for using .env files is because it's a "standard" and you can share that file between different languages for example. A single .env file can be read in NodeJS, PHP, Python,... (others?) without changing any syntax and let dotenv handle everything. My second reason would be the "environment" part. It's clear that it is environment-based and the scope for these variables is globally accessible (less an issue in NodeJS probably) within classes, methods, ..

[@johncerpa3782]

Ahh true that

[@Loppy2345]

For the same reason you wouldn't take a helicopter to do your grocery shopping, it's not the right tool for the job.

[@devinschlegel1763]

his next coding challenge should be solving the heat equation based off of 3blue1brown's video on the same topic

[@TheCodingTrain]

Please suggest here! github.com/CodingTrain/Rainbow-Topics/issues

[@Symparanekromenoii]

So, so useful. Thanks!

[@lilynn7777]

Great Tutorial! Although i have a question and i hope some good soul will answer me. During my Bootcamp, we never got tought or warned to hide our API Keys. So now that i am about to apply for jobs, i have been overwhelmed with the fact that i need to hide my personal API key that i used for my projects (it's a free personal key from my bootcamp). So my question is: What should i do that i already committed and publicly pushed all of my projects and API keys on my github? Thankfully no one has access to it yet but i need to take action before sending applications or post my github to Linkedin. Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙏🙏

[@serdarinjo]

Muchas gracias bro 😀!

[@adedimolao9094]

can you use .env and gitignore in a vanilla js project?

[@zorro1rr]

I'm getting the api key returned in my terminal, but now my data is not being returned in the browser and getting console error: Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined. Help please

[@TheCodingTrain]

Our Coding Train Discord is a great place to get help with coding questions ! discord.gg/hPuGy2g - The Coding Train Team

[@Vincetroid]

You saved me, suscribed!

[@lochsandro]

Nice video!!! How to use this environment variables in the CI(actions)?

[@abhishektyagi4428]

Sir Could you please make a video explaining the resources you use to learn or enhance your programming skills

[@weixiangng8279]

If I were to deploy to vercel how can I retrieve the .env values?

[@ilearncode7365]

From a “security/ privacy” standpoint, how is this any better than just having a js file with a variable for thr api key in it?

[@coffeymay6775]

It says require is not defined for me in the console. I followed the steps in terminal, have the lastest version of node etc.???

[@tannermartz6761]

same ugh this is so annoying

[@Philson]

Is it secure deploying it tho

[@m_ko]

So nice thanks for this video

[@mrpandaaagaming]

I had a question: Can the same effect be accomplished with a config.json and including that in the gitignore?

[@TheRealDjinnet]

for people who tried to find the GitHub project in the video, here is the link to the GitHub repository: github.com/CodingTrain/The-Weather-Here

[@MuhammadRizky-ub3oy]

i love your energy

[@Jb67912]

you don't need an access token for the logs js file? It seems the website of mapbox requires one

[@michaelamay9714]

require('dotenv').config is a sever-side technology not a browser, hence, I am getting an error on my console. How are you not getting this error?

[@githinjohny3413]

did u end up fixing it?

[@GopalChand]

Hi, how about if i am using Docker and dont want to publish my .env file in git. But my application is require env file. Can you pls help how to use .env file in Docker container or K8

[@notprivy]

I see that we can do without require by using node -r. Can you explain how to do it?

[@carlosduque8767]

Why when you put the node_modules in the .gitignore file you put a / in front of it?

[@dusanlukic6784]

because node modules is a folder and then git will ignore every file in that folder

[@Viralplace]

but this works just for development on github... if I go in production like a jam stack project? it is not hidden right?

[@catalinhora6489]

i'm working with custom-env pretty similar, but I need to have two env files, for two environments, how should this be treated? How can i make it work?

[@catalinhora6489]

Nevermind, got it :)))

[@justingolden21]

I prefer sample.env rather than .env_sample that way it still has the same file extension .env which means syntax highlighting and icons in code editor are the same, and also makes it slightly easier to rename.

[@TheCodingTrain]

Great tip!

[@kritikshivanshu]

@TheCodingTrain Hi there! I am facing problem in order to upload .env file in my github repo. Since the application doesn't fetching information. What to do???Please help me.

[@gideonaswani2449]

Awesome, thanks

[@pepew7102]

But your API key is still visible in the sources og the project right ?

[@bhavsar9904]

Hello I am using Angular latest version with nodejs and I am new to it. In Angular we have environment.ts file where we keep API key details. I have used dotenv and generating environment.ts with with node script using dotenv. Now when we build and serve angular application and go to browser and do page view source. Enviornment.ts file is viewable in main.js file with all the details and that I dont want to expose. Any suggestion how to stop exposing this file data in page view source?

[@WEBB99]

how is this different from just making a json file and storing it there?

[@TheCodingTrain]

Ultimately it's the same, but a lot of web hosting services support environment variables in native ways, see my last video in this series!