Using user secrets to access sensitive information

In this demo, i m using user secrets to access sensitive information which need to be kept out of source control :

• credentials

• connection strings

• api keys

• etc.

📌 Enabling user secrets in .net projects can be done using :

• Visual Studio (Right click on the project App and select Manage User Secrets)

• CLI (Run Command dotnet user-secrets init --project App in your Terminal)

📌 After enabling user secrets, an id UserSecretsId is added in the csproj project file.

📌 User Secrets are stored without encryption outside of the project tree in this path :

• For Windows : %APPDATA%\Microsoft\UserSecrets\<UserSecretsId>\secrets.json

• For Linux/macOS : ~/.microsoft/usersecrets/<UserSecretsId>/secrets.json

📌 User Secrets CLI tool provide some interesting commands :

• Use dotnet user-secrets list --project App to list user secrets

• Use dotnet user-secrets set SomeSecretKey SomeSecretValue --project App to set user secrets

• Use dotnet user-secrets clear --project App to clear user secrets

📌 User Secrets should be used only for local development and never in production.

• For production, you can use Azure Key Vault or appsettings.Production.json file.

Tools : vs22, net 6.0, user-secrets