How to Use the secrets Object

NOTE: This article is not applicable for AWS Lambda connectors created after October 4, 2022. We wrote this article before we changed the secrets object's functionality in our connector setup form.

Use Case

You have read the documentation on our cloud function connectors but don’t understand how best to utilize the secrets object. You are looking for an example of how to use this object in your function's response.

Recommendations

Fivetran recommends the following:

• Ensure that you do not hard-code the authentication details into the function code.

• Ensure that your function can use the contents of the secrets object to authenticate with the source API.

For more information, see the following code example:

let post = https.request({

    method: 'POST',

    hostname: 'url.com'

    headers: {

        'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8',

        'Content-Length': 'grant_type=client_credentials'.length,

        'Authorization': 'Basic ' + Buffer.from(<code>${req.body.secrets.value}</code>, 'utf8').toString('base64')

    }
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Context

The secrets object is what Fivetran provides on the initial invocation of your function to ensure that authentication details for the source API are not hard-coded into the function's code.

For example:

• On the invocation of a function, the secrets object is passed as a string populated with the credentials that you enter into the connector setup form as part of a larger object: {"secrets":{"apiAuthenticationParameter": "parameterValue"},"state": {},"agent": "fivetran/fivetran/function"}.
• Parse out the value of the secrets object and use the parameter(s) to authenticate your request to the source API.

Considerations

In the connector setup form, secrets is an optional field. Enter the secrets using a JSON format in the connector setup form. For example,

{
    "agent" : "<function_connector_name>/<external_id>/<schema>",
    "state": {
        "cursor": "2018-01-01T00:00:00Z"
    },
    "secrets": {
        "apiToken": "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_0123456789"
    }
}
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