CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javasave
Get Off My Lawn
Get Off My Lawn

Reputation: 36311

Saving Password/Username Information

So I am building a GUI for connecting to MySQL databases, and I have a window where users can enter in: Host, User, Password, Port and a Connection Name. I would like to save connection information for multiple MySQL database connections.

I want Connection Name to be a unique name and when someone opens the main screen to the application there is a list of previously saved connections. When the user clicks on one of the Connection Names it will connect to the database. And they can then run queries.

What I would like to know is, what would be the best way to save these connections?

In my opinion, Saving in a flat file just doesn't sound like a safe way to do this.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 230

Answers (2)

Sten Petrov
Sten Petrov

Reputation: 11040

If your users have login/password you can use their password to encrypt the connections data.

If they don't (they should!) then your best option depends on the OS: Keychain API in OSX or DPAPI in Windows, I don't know about Linux but it probably has an equivalent API.

And you are correct: it's a horrible idea to put the connection info in a plaintext file

Upvotes: 1

akostadinov
akostadinov

Reputation: 18614

You may encrypt the data with user's password. Don't forget to re-encrypt on password change. This is not the case here but if you have large data to encrypt/decrypt, you can have a statuc key for data but ecrypt key with user password.

There are a lot of solutions to securely store passwords for the desktop but I'm not aware if any of them have java bindings.

Upvotes: 1

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