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Introduction
The play employs a secret key for a variety of purposes, such as:
Session cookies and CSRF tokens that are signed
Integrated encryption tools
The default setting for the play.http.secret.key variable in application.conf is changeme. For production, it should be modified as the default suggests.
Note: If Play detects that the secret is not set or that it is set to changeme when it is launched in prod mode, Play will give an error.
Best Practices
Anybody who discovers the secret will be able to create any session they choose, thereby enabling them to log into your system as any user they desire. You are strongly advised against checking your application secret into source control as a result. Instead, it ought to be set up on your production server. This indicates that storing the production application secret in application.conf is not a good idea.
This method is fairly straightforward, and we'll use it to emphasize the requirement to set the application secret in the Play guidelines on running your app in production mode. But in some settings, it's not regarded as best practice to provide secrets in command-line parameters. Two approaches can be taken to this.
Environment Variables
The application secret should first be stored in an environment variable. In this situation, we advise adding the following settings to your application.conf file:
If an environment variable called APPLICATION SECRET is set, the second line in that configuration changes the secret from the preceding line to originate from it. If not, it leaves the secret unmodified.
The use of environment variables to specify passwords and other secrets is common practice in cloud-based deployment scenarios, and the API of the cloud provider in question can be used to set up these variables.
Production Configuration File
The creation of a production.conf file, which resides on the server and includes application.conf but overrides any sensitive configuration, including the application secret and passwords, is an alternative method.
Production checks the play.http.secret.key application secret setting for a minimum duration. A warning is logged if the key is fifteen characters or less. An error is raised, and the configuration is invalid if the key has eight characters or less. This problem can be fixed by either utilizing the application secret generator, using playGenerateSecret or playUpdateSecret as described below, or by setting the secret to at least 32 bytes of entirely random input.
As previously mentioned, the application secret is also used as the key to make sure that a Play session cookie is valid, that is, that it was created by the server and not a hacker. The quantity of entropy in the string is not specified by the secret; it just specifies a string. In any case, the length of the secret can be used to impose a limit on how much entropy it contains. For example, a secret that is just eight characters long can only contain 64 bits of entropy, which is insufficient by today's standards.
Generating an Application Secret
Play offers a tool you can use to create a fresh secret. In the Play console, execute playGenerateSecret. You can utilize the new secret that is created as a result of your application. For instance:
[success] Total time: 0 s, completed 28/03/2014 2:26:09 PM
Updating the Application Secret in application.conf
If you want a specific secret set up for test or development servers, Play also offers a handy utility for modifying the secret in application.conf. When you want to make sure that the same secret is used each time the application is run in development mode, and you have encrypted data using the application secret, this is frequently helpful.
Run playUpdateSecret in the Play terminal to modify the secret in application.conf:
[success] Total time: 0 s, completed 28/03/2014 2:36:54 PM
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the use of the play framework?
Play Framework is a free, open-source web application based on the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural paradigm. It is built on Akka and delivers predictable and low resource usage (CPU, memory, threads) for highly scalable applications.
What is debugging?
It is the process of identifying and removing computer hardware or software errors.
What does SBT stand for?
SBT stands for System Build Tools.
What is HTTP?
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application-layer protocol for transmitting hypermedia documents, such as HTML. It was designed for communication between web browsers and web servers.
What is MVC?
MVC is an architectural paradigm that divides an application into three basic logical components: the model, the view, and the controller.
Conclusion
In this article, we have extensively discussed how to configure the application secret.
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