Storing sensitive information outside of your codebase¶

secrets.settings.php file¶

Storing sensitive credentials in a secrets file and not in your website’s database means your private data won’t exist in your database backups. With this, you can distribute database backups to team members who might need a database snapshot, but do not need full access to external systems.

To create and use a secrets file with your website:

1. Connect to your server using SSH.

2. Navigate to your home directory.

3. If the secrets.settings.php file doesn’t exist, create it.

   Important

   In Cloud Classic, do not create the file in the /mnt/gfs/[sitename].[env]/files/ directory, as files in this are publicly accessible.

4. To make the secrets file available to your application, add the lines in the following example to the appropriate location based on your installed product:

   • Cloud Platform: To your website’s settings.php file

   • Site Factory: To a post-settings-php hook named secrets.php

     Important

     Add the secrets file to all Site Factory environments. During the Site Factory staging process, the secrets.settings.php file will not copy down to lower environments.

     $secrets_file = sprintf('${HOME_DIRECTORY}/secrets.settings.php', $_ENV['AH_SITE_GROUP'],$_ENV['AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT']);
     
     if (file_exists($secrets_file)) {
        require $secrets_file;
     }
     

   Since the code uses $_ENV['AH_SITE_ENVIRONMENT'] to build the link to the secrets.settings.php file, you can provide unique files for each of your website’s environments.

Using the nobackup directory¶

You can also create a special nobackup directory where you can place files containing sensitive credentials. For information about using the method, see Storing private information in the file system.