# Visual Studio Solution Secrets

> **A NEW VERSION IS AVAILABLE !!!**
> 
> Visual Studio Solution Secrets has been updated to version 2.0. [Click here](https://devnotes.ernstc.net/visual-studio-solution-secrets-v2) to read about the news.

If you are good in DevOps practices, you should know that secrets (sensitive data like passwords, connection strings, access keys, etc.) must not be committed with your code in any case and must not be deployed with the apps.

Fortunately Visual Studio and .Net help us in separating secrets from our code with the ***User Secrets Manager*** tool that let us store secrets out of the solution folder. The User Secrets Manager hides implementation details, but essentially it stores secrets in files located in the machine's user profile folder.

You can find the **User Secrets Manager** documentation [here](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/app-secrets?view=aspnetcore-6.0&tabs=windows#secret-manager).

## The Problem

When you change your development machine usually you clone your project code from a remote repository and then you would like to be up and running for developing and testing you code in a matter of seconds.

But if you have managed secrets with the tool User Secrets Manager you will not be immediatly able to test your code because you will miss something very important on your new machine: **the secret settings** that let your code work.

## The Solution

For being immediatley ready to start developing and testing on the new development machine you have three choices.

1.  Manually copy secret files from the old machine to the new one, if you still have access to the old machine.
    
2.  Recreate the secret settings on your new machine for each project of the solution, but this can be tedious because you have to recover passwords, keys, etc. from different resources and it can be time consuming.
    
3.  Use **Visual Studio Solution Secrets** tool for synchronizing secret settings through the cloud in a quick and secure way.
    

The idea behind the Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool is to use GitHub Gists as the repository for your secrets. The tool collects all the secret settings used in the solution, encrypts and pushes them on GitHub in a secret Gist, so that only you can see them. The encryption key is generated from a passphrase or a key file that you specify during the one time initialization phase of the tool.

Once you change the development machine, you don't have to copy any file from the old one. Just install the tool, recreate the encryption key with your passphrase or your key file, authorize the tool on GitHub and you are ready.

![Concept](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ernstc/VisualStudioSolutionSecrets/main/Concept.png align="left")

## How to use it

For installing Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool, use the command below:

```plaintext
dotnet tool install --global vs-secrets
```

After you have installed the tool, you need to create the encryption key and then authorize it to use yours GitHub Gists. You can do this with the command:

```plaintext
vs-secrets init -p <your-passphrase>
```

For creating the encryption key, by default the tool will ask you for a passphrase. If you prefer, you can use a key file as the input to the encryption key generation algorithm with the command below:

```plaintext
vs-secrets init --keyfile <file-path>
```

### Push solution secrets

For pushing the secrets of the solution in current folder:

```plaintext
vs-secrets push
```

For pushing the secrets of the solution in another folder:

```plaintext
vs-secrets push --path <solution-path>
```

For pushing the secrets of all the solutions in a folder tree:

```plaintext
vs-secrets push --all
```

or

```plaintext
vs-secrets push --path <path> --all
```

### Pull solution secrets

For pulling the secrets of the solution in current folder:

```plaintext
vs-secrets pull
```

For pulling the secrets of the solution in another folder:

```plaintext
vs-secrets pull --path <solution-path>
```

For pulling the secrets of all the solutions in a folder tree:

```plaintext
vs-secrets pull --all
```

or

```plaintext
vs-secrets pull --path <path> --all
```

### Searching for solution secrets

You can also use the tool for just searching solutions and projects that use secrets

```plaintext
vs-secrets search
```

```plaintext
vs-secrets search --path <solution-path>
```

```plaintext
vs-secrets search --all
```

```plaintext
vs-secrets search --path <path> --all
```

## Visual Studio Solution Secrets files

Visual Studio Solution Secrets tool stores its files in the machine's user profile folder.

| Platform | Path |
| --- | --- |
| Windows | `%APPDATA%\Visual Studio Solution Secrets` |
| macSO | `~/.visualstudiosolutionsecrets` |
| Linux | `~/.visualstudiosolutionsecrets` |

Below are listed the files generated by the tool.

| File | Description |
| --- | --- |
| cipher.json | Contains the encryption key |
| github.json | Contains the access token for managing user's GitHub Gists |

* * *

*Visual Studio Solution Secrets* is a free open source tool and its code is available on [GitHub](https://github.com/ernstc/VisualStudioSolutionSecrets).