Handling Django secret key & other sensitive info

I have been rather confused over the whole process of keeping sensitive info out of my Django settings.py file.

This is unavoidable if you ever plan on uploading your code to Github...which is pretty much what you have to do if you ever want to deploy & share your project with the world! I wrestled with the idea of uploading to a private BitBucket repository but decided not to take any shortcuts. As this page demonstrates, there are many ways to go about doing this. I just found this way to make the most sense for my simple application.

I chose to go with Marina Mele's method:

Add this get_env_variable() function to your settings.py:

def get_env_variable(var_name):
    """ Get the environment variable or return exception """
    try:
        return os.environ[var_name]
    except KeyError:
        error_msg = "Set the %s environment variable" % var_name
        raise ImproperlyConfigured(error_msg)

Then copy the text SECRET_KEY = 'YOURSECRETKEYHERE' (the one automatically generated when you started your Django project) to your clipboard...you will be using it very soon. Add this line to settings.py in its place:
SECRET_KEY = get_env_variable('SECRET_KEY')

And then in your command line, activate your virtual environment. (Type everything after the $ on each line)

$ workon (name of your virtual env here)

$ cd $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin

$ subl postactivate

This should open up your postactivate file in Sublime Text. If you don't have this set up in your bash profile just yet, add this line to your bash_profile*:

alias subl="/Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl"

Paste this into the file (leave the quotes):
export SECRET_KEY='YOURSECRETKEYHERE'

Save the file and close it. Back in your command line, type:

$ subl predeactivate

and add the line:

unset SECRET_KEY

Save and close. 

Now we are ready to test that it worked! In the command line, activate your virtual environment and type:

$ echo $SECRET_KEY 

It should spit out the value you just added to the postactivate file.

Deactivate your virtual environment and press the up arrow to echo $SECRET_KEY again. A blank line should appear. Your command line's lips are sealed because your virtual environment is no longer active! Once you deactivate your virtual env, "predeactivate" runs, so that SECRET_KEY is unset.

Do the same to store other sensitive data, like secret API keys and such.

*To add something to your bash profile, type this into the command line: 

open -e .bash_profile

Add the line to the file in TextEdit and save and close. To make these changes take effect without closing and reopening Terminal, type one last command:

source ~/.bash_profile