ActsAsEncryptable

This gem adds support with ActiveSupport's existing message encryption and allows you to set any ActiveRecord model column as an encrypted field.

It's bloat free and easy to use. This way you're up to date on security as long as Rails is. And there's no high maintenance or feature bloat like other "encryption helper gems" have 😉 . It's fully tested too!

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'acts_as_encryptable'

And create an initializer file:

# config/initializers/acts_as_encryptable.rb
ActiveRecord::Base.extend ActsAsEncryptable

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install acts_as_encryptable

Usage

Adding encryption to any column is as easy as writing a few lines.

class Email < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_encryptable :raw_body, :the_key, :the_salt

  private
  def the_key
    "example key" # Some consistent/secure way to derive the key
  end

  def the_salt
    "example salt" # Some consistent/secure way to derive the salt
  end
end

If you're encrypting multiple fields you may choose to vary what keys and salts are used per column, but this will add a performance hit for the extra encryption startup time.

If you want to perform additional work on record data that you want to encrypt; write a method alias after the acts_as_encryptable decleration and have your new method call it. acts_as_encryptable should always be written before any method aliasing.

# Example
alias_method :renamed_method, :current_example

def current_example
  renamed_method.do_something
end

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/danielpclark/acts_as_encryptable.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.