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Configuring Django project to storing sensitive data in YAML file

Hardcoding tokens, database credentials and other sensitive data in .py files is not secure. Many people use django-environ library, but I think it inconvenient. So I use yaml files for storing sensitive data and pyyaml library for reading data of them.

Create project folder:

mkdir myproject

Switch in created folder:

cd myproject

Create virtual environment:

python3 -m venv env

Activate virtual environment:

source env/bin/activate

Install Django and pyyaml:

pip3 install django pyyaml

Start new Django project:

django-admin startproject myproject .

Create "settings.yaml" file near to the "settings.py" file:

touch myproject/settings.yaml

Insert imports in beginning of "settings.py" file:

import os
import yaml

Insert code at the top of "settings.py" file (after imports) for reading from "settings.yaml":

with open(os.path.join(str(Path(__file__).resolve().parent), 'settings.yaml'), 'r') as settingsfile:
settings = yaml.safe_load(settingsfile)

Insert code for reading from "settings.yaml" file:

SECRET_KEY = settings['SECRET_KEY']
DEBUG = settings['DEBUG']
ALLOWED_HOSTS = settings['ALLOWED_HOSTS']
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'NAME': settings['DATABASES']['NAME'],
        'USER': settings['DATABASES']['USER'],
        'PASSWORD': settings['DATABASES']['PASSWORD'],
        'HOST': settings['DATABASES']['HOST'],
        'PORT': settings['DATABASES']['PORT'],
    }
}

Put configurations in "settings.yaml":

SECRET_KEY: 'your-secret-token'
DEBUG: true
ALLOWED_HOSTS:
- 127.0.0.1
- localhost
- 0.0.0.0
DATABASES:
NAME: 'database_name'
USER: 'database_user'
PASSWORD: 'password'
HOST: '127.0.0.1'
PORT: '5432'

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2025

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