Storing sensitive information outside of your codebase¶

secrets.settings.php file¶

Storing sensitive credentials in a secrets file instead of your website’s database means your sensitive data will not be present in your database backups, allowing you to distribute database backups to team members who may need a database snapshot but not full access to external systems.

To create and use a secrets file with your website, complete the following steps:

1. Connect to your server using SSH

2. Navigate to the /mnt/files/[sitename].[env]/ directory, where [sitename] is your website’s name and [env] is your website’s environment.

3. Create the secrets.settings.php file if it does not already exist.

   Important

   Do not create the file in /mnt/gfs/[sitename].[env]/files/, as files in that directory 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:

   • Acquia Cloud – To your website’s settings.php file

   • Acquia Cloud Site Factory – To a post-settings-php hook named secrets.php

     Important

     The secrets file must be added to all Acquia Cloud Site Factory environments. During the Acquia Cloud Site Factory staging process, the secrets.settings.php file will not be copied down to lower environments.

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

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

nobackup directory¶

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