Using Secret Variables

Using Secret Variables

Numerous supports “secret variables” that make it possible to store your credentials securely. Secret variables refer to passwords, credentials, or other information you would not like to be shown in the source code.

Add your secret values to .env

In order to define the secret variables used in your app, you must create a file called .env and add it to your app folder. This is also the folder where the manifest file numerous.toml is stored.

For example, it might look like the following:

.env
MY_SECRET=A secret value
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It is important to ensure that .env is ignored in your version control (e.g. git). We also recommend that you exclude it from any uploads to the Numerous platform.

Apps initialized with Numerous CLI version greater than 0.3.1 have this setup by default, but existing apps should update their .gitignore and numerous.toml. See instructions for updating numerous.toml here.

Access secrets in environment variables

In the app code, secrets are accessible as environment variables. In Python, you can access environment variables using the getenv (opens in a new tab) function in the os (opens in a new tab) module.

As an example, consider this simple Streamlit app that accesses the previously defined MY_SECRET.

app.py
import os
import streamlit as st
 
st.title("A test of secrets")
 
st.text(f"My secret: {os.getenv('MY_SECRET')}")

The above code will result in this app being rendered:

Deploy your app

In order to re-deploy your app with the specified secrets, deploy your app after updating .env.

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If you remove any secret variables from .env, they will no longer be available to your app.

Command-Line Interface (CLI) ReferenceApp Overview