Hide login credentials in Python script

Question

I am using Python 2.7.3 and successfully passing my login credentials to an SMTP server to send me a text or email when an event trigger takes place. However, now I would like to store the SMTP server login and password in a separate file so that multiple scripts could use that information or so that I can share my script without having to remove my credentials each time.

I am using the great tutorial from Alex Le on sending an SMS via Python. But now I want to take the following segment and put it into another file that can be called by multiple scripts. This could be either just the username/password pair or the whole section.

server = smtplib.SMTP( "smtp.gmail.com", 587 )
server.starttls()
server.login( '<gmail_address>', '<gmail_password>' )

I would consider myself a pretty basic Python programmer. I don't mind doing some research, but I think I need help on what terms I should be looking for.

Answer 1

Get all the critical variables from .yml file:

import yaml
conf = yaml.load(open('conf/application.yml'))
email = conf['user']['email']
pwd = conf['user']['password']

server = smtplib.SMTP( "smtp.gmail.com", 587 ) # add these 2 to .yml as well
server.starttls()
server.login(email, pwd)

The application.yml will look similar to this:

user:
    email: [email protected]
    password: yourpassword

This way, you will never see the actual credentials in the script.