Assignment 7 - Add secrets management

In this assignment, you're going to add the Dapr secrets management building block.

Dapr secrets management building block

Almost all non-trivial applications need to securely store secret data like API keys, database passwords, and more. By nature, these secrets should not be checked into the version control system, but they also need to be accessible to code running in production. This is generally a hard problem, but it's critical to get it right. Otherwise, production systems can be compromised.

Dapr's solution to this problem is the secrets API and secrets stores.

Here's how it works:

• Dapr is set up to use a secret store - a place to securely store secret data
• Application code uses the standard Dapr secrets API to retrieve secrets.

Some examples for secret stores include Kubernetes, Hashicorp Vault, Azure KeyVault.

Application code can call the secrets building block API to retrieve secrets from Dapr supported secret stores that can be used in your code. For example, the diagram below shows an application requesting the secret called "mysecret" from a secret store called "vault" from a configured cloud secret store:

For this assignment you are supposed to use the file-based local secret store component. This is only for development or testing purposes. Never use this component in production!

Another way of using secrets, is to reference them from Dapr configuration files. You will use both ways of working with secrets in this assignment.

For this hands-on assignment, this is all you need to know about this building block. If you want to get more detailed information, read the introduction to this building block in the Dapr documentation.

Assignment goals

To complete this assignment, you must reach the following goals:

• The credentials used by the SMTP output binding to connect to the SMTP server are retrieved using the Dapr secrets management building block.
• The FineCollectionService retrieves the license key for the FineCalculator component it uses from the Dapr secrets management building block.

This assignment targets number 6 in the end-state setup:

DIY instructions

Open the source code folder in VS Code. Then open the Secrets management documentation and start hacking away.

Step by step instructions

To get step-by-step instructions to achieve the goals, open the step-by-step instructions:

• for .NET
• for Java
• for Python

Final solution

Congratulations, you have reached the end of the hands-on assignments! If you haven't been able to do all the assignments, go to this repository for the end result.

Thanks for participating in these hands-on assignments! Hopefully you've learned about Dapr and how to use it. Obviously, these assignments barely scratch the surface of what is possible with Dapr. We have not touched upon subjects like: hardening production environments, actors, integration with Azure Functions, Azure API Management and Azure Logic Apps just to name a few. So if you're interested in learning more, I suggest you read the Dapr documentation.