How to keep secrets out of your public source by using OpenShift ENV variables

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Keep secrets out of your source when working with OpenShift

These steps assume that you already have a working app on OpenShift. If you need help, you can get started here!

1. Find your app's ssh address

rhc app show YOUR_APP_NAME

2. ssh into your gear to set your environment variables:

ssh YOUR_APP_SSH_URL

3. Add your environment variables to your ~/app-root/data/.bash_profile

echo "export SECRET_PASS=12345678910" >> ~/app-root/data/.bash_profile

4. Make sure that your .bash_profile is sourced during your app's start up

cd YOUR_LOCAL_REPO
echo "source ~/app-root/data/.bash_profile" >> .openshift/action_hooks/pre_start_nodejs-0.6
git add .openshift/action_hooks/pre_start_nodejs-0.6
git commit -m 'importing bash profile during app init'
git push

Once you have completed these steps, you should be able to reference these variables in node.js via process.env.* Specifically, the above example should make process.env.SECRET_PASS available in your code.

PHP users should be able to access the same variable as getenv('SECRET_PASS'). If you are not using node.js, then the name of the action hook start script (in line 2-3 of step 4) will be different, and will need to be adjusted accordingly.