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Environment Variables, Secrets, and the Parameter Store

When storing sensitive information that cannot be publicly exposed, it must be stored in AWS and referenced in a specific manner.

Creating and Referencing Settings in the Parameter Store​

Please consult the detailed and evolving process for using the Parameter Store in the Platform Documentation: Settings and Parameter Store

Mobile-specific Naming Conventions​

If a setting is different between modalities (web and mobile), consider appending _mobile to a setting key. For example, the tokens and API keys are different between mobile and web for MHV/RX, so we've defined the following:

mhv:
  rx:
    app_token: <%= ENV['mhv__rx__app_token'] %>
    x_api_key: <%= ENV['mhv__rx__x_api_key'] %>
mhv_mobile:
  rx:
    app_token: <%= ENV['mhv_mobile__rx__app_token'] %>
    x_api_key: <%= ENV['mhv_mobile__rx__x_api_key'] %>

Otherwise, use the same conventions, i.e. /dsva-vagov/vets-api/staging/env_vars/my_setting/value, as defined in the documentation or the setting will not be properly loaded.

Devops Repo​

If you'd like to use these values in review instances, after updating the vets-api repo, add the variables to the devops repo in ansible/roles/review-instance-configure/vars/settings.local.yml