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 for reading from settings.yaml file:

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'