Envrionment variables for hiding credentials used to connect to the database

Example:

database: postgreSQL python library used to connect: psycopg2

Background:

The stem script for psycopg2.coonect is like conn=psycopg2.connect(host="real_host_info",user="real_user_name",dbname="real_db_name", password="the_password").

Purpose:

We want to hide the credential in a shared space, we need to set envrionment variables to store them, and in the code, you just need to get the environment variables to let the system autofill them in.

Steps: Here is how to do it in the Terminal

1. First, to figure out which shell you are running

echo $SHELL It will give an output like this: /bin/zsh

2. And then use the command export to define the environment variable (KEY) and its actual value that you want to hide eventually

export KEY=value

3. Once this is done, simply type the following and it should return the value you just set

eho $KEY

Usage

In the python file storing self-defined functions, we can use connection=psycopg2.connect(**params) rather than the full info inside connect().