Is it possible to store the alembic connect string outside of alembic.ini?

Question

I'm using Alembic with SQL Alchemy. With SQL Alchemy, I tend to follow a pattern where I don't store the connect string with the versioned code. Instead I have file secret.py that contains any confidential information. I throw this filename in my .gitignore so it doesn't end up on GitHub.

This pattern works fine, but now I'm getting into using Alembic for migrations. It appears that I cannot hide the connect string. Instead in alembic.ini, you place the connect string as a configuration parameter:

# the 'revision' command, regardless of autogenerate # revision_environment = false  sqlalchemy.url = driver://user:pass@localhost/dbname  # Logging configuration [loggers] keys = root,sqlalchemy,alembi 

I fear I'm going to accidentally commit a file with username/password information for my database. I'd rather store this connect string in a single place and avoid the risk of accidentally committing it to version control.

What options do I have?

Answer 1

I had the very same problem yesterday and found a following solution to work. I do the following in alembic/env.py:

# this is the Alembic Config object, which provides # access to the values within the .ini file in use. config = context.config  # this will overwrite the ini-file sqlalchemy.url path # with the path given in the config of the main code import config as ems_config config.set_main_option('sqlalchemy.url', ems_config.config.get('sql', 'database')) 

ems_config is an external module that holds my configuration data.

config.set_main_option(...) essentially overwrites the sqlalchemy.url key in the [alembic] section of the alembic.ini file. In my configuration I simply leave it black.