API logins etc

[jgomezdans]

Environmental variables are often used to set passwords up, e.g.

$ export FUNKPASS=paZZw0rd

import os                                                                                                                                                           
print(os.environ["FUNKPASS"])
paZZw0rd

There are issues as to how to make this user selectable/persistent (other than editing .bashrc directly)

[profLewis]

We don't want these exposed in the notebooks, so yes, using env is useful.
You can write these into the notebook kernel (I tried that) but its dangerous and easy to mess up.
So for now now Ive set it up to write to /.bashrc (/.zshrc) as an environment variable.

the code in api.py does this. If it doesnt find the env variable, it uses getpass to prompt for it.

Thats ok on the docker, but not secure for normal users, as this has -rw-r--r-- ...

I think the answer is to store in a separate file eg in ~/.jupyter/.keys.dat and set permissions for -rw------- on that.
Since I have .jupyter in the repo, need to remember to put .keys.dat in .gitignore.

Thoughts?

[profLewis]

To make persistent, simply

source ~/.jupyter/.keys.dat

from bashrc then