Conceal your API Keys in Android. Everyone has a secret | by tomerpacific | Jan, 2023 | Boot Tech

You might be utilizing a model management system and your mission makes use of some providers that require API keys. That is all nicely and good while you’re in your native machine, however you clearly do not wish to share these API keys with the world.

How can we hold our API keys inside our app, but in addition disguise them once we push our code to our repository?

We would like to have the ability to proceed to make use of our API keys as regular inside our functions, but in addition not expose them.

That is the place mysteries enters. Just like those you retain only for your self, however in a developer manner.

Secrets and techniques can characterize essential data that your utility requires to perform, however they shouldn’t be seen to anybody working outdoors of the mission. These could be API keys or authorization tokens, however in essence it’s any authorization data that ought to solely be utilized by you and solely you. Just like how you do not wish to share your web site password with anybody else.

🚨 Disclaimer: Please observe that the answer supplied on this article works to not expose your secrets and techniques out of your model management system, however since they’re a part of your utility, they will nonetheless be found by decompiling your APK. To learn the way to do it, right here is an effective place to begin.

Maintaining your secrets and techniques secure

1. In your mission, you must have a native.properties file within the root listing of your mission
2. To verify your model management system ignores it, open the .gitignore file and see what’s there:

3. You will want to import the Secrets and techniques Gradle plugin into your mission:

3.1. Go to the foundation construct.gradle file of your mission and paste the next line:

 buildscript 
dependencies 
id 'com.google.android.libraries.mapsplatform.secrets-gradle-plugin' model '2.0.1' apply false

3.2. Go to your utility’s construct.gradle file and paste the next line:

plugins 
...
id 'com.google.android.libraries.mapsplatform.secrets-gradle-plugin'

4. Add your API key contained in the native.properties file:

5. You should use your secret inside your AndroidManifest.xml file by including a metadata tag inside your app tag:

 <utility
android:allowBackup="true" 
.....
>
<exercise>
....
</exercise>
<meta-data
android:title="YOUR_API_KEY_NAME"     /// Select any worth right here
android:worth="$API_KEY_NAME"/>    /// Write the title you gave inside your native.properties file
</utility>

6. To entry your API key, you should use the PackageManager to get the metadata:

val applicationInfo: ApplicationInfo = utility.packageManager
.getApplicationInfo(utility.packageName, PackageManager.GET_META_DATA)
val apiKey = applicationInfo.metaData["YOUR_API_KEY_NAME"]

7. Alternatively, you may as well use the BuildConfig object to get it:

BuildConfig.YOUR_API_KEY_NAME