CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-gradle-plugin
Martin
Martin

Reputation: 24318

Android - excluding an api key from github, where to store the api key in code?

I was wondering what the best way of storing an api key is in android studio. I would want to exclude this file from github using gitignore.

I have seen some people use the gradle.properties in the HOME directory but the api is specific to my application.

I also notice there is a gradle.properties in a new android studio project but this can contain other things that I may not want to exclude.

Anyone know the best way to do this ?

So the file would be available locally and my project would read it at runtime but I would "maybe" gitignore this file so I wouldn't commit it so I would not expose my api key.

Upvotes: 13

Views: 4506

Answers (4)

Slion
Slion

Reputation: 3068

You could define it in local.properties which is not usually under source control:

apikey="sdkjhqsffoief"

Your build.gradle should then look like:

android {
    //…
    // Load properties file containing our API key
    Properties properties = new Properties()
    properties.load(project.rootProject.file('local.properties').newDataInputStream())
    def apikey = properties.getProperty('apikey')

    defaultConfig {
        //…
        buildConfigField "String" , "API_KEY" ,  apikey

    }

    buildFeatures {
        //…
        buildConfig true
    }
}

In code you can access it like that:

val apiKey = BuildConfig.API_KEY

Upvotes: 1

Ilanthirayan Paramanathan
Ilanthirayan Paramanathan

Reputation: 450

on MacOS Put this into ~/.gradle/gradle.properties

THE_MOVIE_DATABASE_API_KEY=***********

Android Studio Gradle int build.gradle

    defaultConfig {
    applicationId "com.sample"
    minSdkVersion 16
    targetSdkVersion 27
    versionCode 1
    versionName "1.0"
    testInstrumentationRunner "android.support.test.runner.AndroidJUnitRunner"
    buildConfigField "String" , "API_KEY" ,  "\"$THE_MOVIE_DATABASE_API_KEY\""
}

Then in Java Code you can Access BuildConfig.API_KEY

Upvotes: 3

Denis
Denis

Reputation: 2314

You can store api keys with help of gradle and the system path variable Add new system PATH variable THE_MOVIE_DB_API_TOKEN="XXXXX":

For Windows OS:

  • Open System
  • Advanced system settings
  • Environment variables
  • Add new variables to the user variables

Add the following code to the build.gradle file

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'

  android {
   ...

    defaultConfig {
        ...
    }
    buildTypes {
        release {
            ...
        }
        buildTypes.each {
            it.buildConfigField 'String', 'THE_MOVIE_DB_API_TOKEN', "$System.env.THE_MOVIE_DB_API_TOKEN"
        }
    }
}

Use the API keys in Java code like this

BuildConfig.THE_MOVIE_DB_API_TOKEN)

Upvotes: 3

Dmitry Zaytsev
Dmitry Zaytsev

Reputation: 23972

I have seen some people use the gradle.properties in the HOME directory but the api is specific to my application.

I see no problem with API being specific to your app. We have similar situations sometimes, so we just use some unique name for gradle.properties entries. Something like

(MY_APP_NAME)_(MY_API_NAME)_API_KEY

Also we're storing passwords to our internal Maven repositories in the same way, so they're not pushed to GitHub as part of build.gradle file. I can say we're pretty happy with that approach.

Some alternatives which I can think about:

  • Explicitly pass parameters to gradle while executing task. So, you can store those parameters in Android Studio configuration.
  • You can apply another .gradle file to your buildscript (which will contain your variables) using apply from: 'path-to-my-local-script.gradle'. Just don't forget to add it to .gitignore.

Upvotes: 3

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