Is it possible to encrypt some data in the Community Edition?

[japino]

I’m working on a small project for a very limited audience. I’m using the Community Edition and it’s absolutely fine that they can see my code. But I’m also using an API key stored in a field that I’m using for a call and I’d like to keep that key private. Is that possible at all in the Community Edition?

[richmond62]

As the Community edition is open source it is governed by an open source licence,
ad as such, should anyone request all of your code you have to supply it to them.

I also have a funny feeling that rolling a proprietary component into something open source may,
theoretically at least, be opening a legal can of worms.

[FourthWorld]

Industry-standard encryption is available with all editions of LiveCode. Only the ability to encrypt scripts is absent in the Community Edition, as it would not be needed for deployments where source is freely available. Data, however, can be strongly encrypted.

As for API keys, consider that most scripting languages have no script encryption at all. What do you need to do specifically? I'll bet there's a way other languages handle it well, and we should be able to do it at least as well with LC.

[japino]

My script is making a curl call to a website using the shell command. The API key is in the curl call and I don’t want people to see my API key.

[FourthWorld]

The top answer here includes good discussion of the issue and a few different options for resolving it:
https://softwareengineering.stackexchan ... ource-code

[japino]

Thanks Richard, that's very useful!

[FourthWorld]

Thanks Richard, that's very useful!

You're welcome. Happy to help.

Keep us posted if you run into any other challenges.