How to hide database credentials in Spring Boot application?

Question

SOLVED

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Solution:

Using Jasypt. You can click here for more information how to set up. There is just one thing to mention. For me, it didn't work as if I configure the application.properties as they say. Therefore, you have to add one more line. These are the steps how to encrypt your credentials and configure them in application.properties:

1. First you need to encrypt the string values running this in your terminal (NOTE: I am currently using Linux, so it may vary depending on your OS):

mvn jasypt:encrypt-value -Djasypt.encryptor.password=encryptorPassword -Djasypt.plugin.value=password

After running this you would see something like this:

ENC(MBTWfX8gqMevQe5CKW0pToMbajnpJk0zlb3yoooiSWPjkfYrE8TFNF6vDEMXTu/j)

This is going to be your encrypted value wrapped inside ENC().

You can then check if your password is actually encrypted. Run this command:

mvn jasypt:decrypt-value -Djasypt.encryptor.password=encryptorPassword -Djasypt.plugin.value=MBTWfX8gqMevQe5CKW0pToMbajnpJk0zlb3yoooiSWPjkfYrE8TFNF6vDEMXTu/j

And you should see your actual password. Following the same steps, you can encrypt your database name etc. as well.

2. Now, you have to pass VM argument in your IDE, I am going to show you how to do in in IntelliJ. Go to Edit Configurations in the IDE and fill Program arguments, therefore apply then OK button:
3. Last step is to correctly set up configuration file, here I am showing how to configure it in application.properties file:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/db_name?serverTimezone=UTC&useUnicode=yes&characterEncoding=UTF-8
spring.datasource.username=root
spring.datasource.password=ENC(MBTWfX8gqMevQe5CKW0pToMbajnpJk0zlb3yoooiSWPjkfYrE8TFNF6vDEMXTu/j)
jasypt.encryptor.password=encryptorPassword
jasypt.encryptor.algorithm=PBEWithMD5AndDES
jasypt.encryptor.iv-generator-classname=org.jasypt.iv.NoIvGenerator

Now, your Spring Boot Application should just work fine. Good Luck!

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I am currently using the latest version of Spring Boot(version 3.0.5) in IntelliJ IDEA. I want to hide my database credentials, username and password, in a good way then configure them in the application.properties.

Note: I am using Linux(Ubuntu) and you can assume that my credentials are correct.

As far as I know, a good way of handling this problem is setting up environment variables and configure them in the application.properties or whatever you are using to store your configuration properties.
Therefore, in the ./zhsrc file I set new environment variables: DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD. After, I configured them in the .properties file. Here how it looks like: click here to see the image.

However, it is like my environment variables are not recognized during the application running. I get this error:

2023-04-23 10:42:14 [main] ERROR com.zaxxer.hikari.pool.HikariPool - HikariPool-1 - Exception during pool initialization.
java.sql.SQLException: Access denied for user '${DB_USERNAME}'@'localhost' (using password: YES)
...
...
2023-04-23 10:42:14 [main] WARN  o.h.e.j.e.i.JdbcEnvironmentInitiator - HHH000342: Could not obtain connection to query metadata
java.sql.SQLException: Access denied for user '${DB_USERNAME}'@'localhost' (using password: YES

I solved this problem using alternative way (I don't like it though). What I did is creating two script files (in the source root) named run_app.sh(this sets up the same environment variables temporarily every time during running the script) and stop_app.sh(this kills the process running on the 8080 port). If I don't have stop_app.sh, I can't run the application again, as it cannot be run on the same port. It was the way of killing the process on the 8080 port.
Why I don't want to run these scripts is that, if I want to write some tests I will face the same issue, then I have to create other scripts, specifically for my tests.
AGREE...Boring and long

How would you handle this problem?