Password Space Is a Password Manager for Families

In this episode of Running in Production, Nick Hnatiw goes over building a password manager with Django and Python. It’s hosted on Heroku and DigitalOcean.

Nick talks about using Django Rest Framework because there’s a web app along with native mobile apps, the value in charging for a product to avoid having your data sold, using HashiCorp Vault to manage user’s private keys and more.

Topics Include

• 5:05 – Motivation for using Django and Python
• 7:15 – The Django admin isn’t perfect but it helps save a lot of time
• 9:16 – Using Django Guardian and Django Rest Framework
• 11:05 – It’s a monolithic API back-end with 1 extra small service to handle private keys
• 13:12 – The back-end is about 1,000 or 2,000 lines of code
• 14:03 – It’ll be a small amount per month to use and all of your data will be private
• 16:42 – Using React on the front-end and why the back-end is an API
• 18:26 – The back-end will likely be open source in the future
• 20:35 – Developing the API back-end alongside the React + mobile app front-ends
• 22:04 – The site is hosted on Heroku’s free tier (including PostgreSQL too)
• 26:43 – The process to develop a feature and then have it be live on the site
• 29:55 – The database and encrypted keys are being backed up
• 30:45 – The Vault service is running on a $5 / month DigitalOcean server
• 34:01 – The server is running Ubuntu and we share a fun trip down memory lane with Gentoo
• 37:04 – Best tips? Discovering Vault and being able to use it to secure user data
• 42:54 – Check out http://passwordspace.com/

Links

📄 References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself
• https://www.vaultproject.io/

⚙️ Tech Stack

• django →
• python →
• react →
• digitalocean →
• heroku →
• postgres →
• sendgrid →
• ubuntu →
• webpack →

🛠 Libraries Used

• https://github.com/encode/django-rest-framework
• https://gunicorn.org/

Support the Show

This episode does not have a sponsor and this podcast is a labor of love. If you want to support the show, the best way to do it is to purchase one of my courses or suggest one to a friend.

• Dive into Docker is a video course that takes you from not knowing what Docker is to being able to confidently use Docker and Docker Compose for your own apps. Long gone are the days of "but it works on my machine!". A bunch of follow along labs are included.

• Build a SAAS App with Flask is a video course where we build a real world SAAS app that accepts payments, has a custom admin, includes high test coverage and goes over how to implement and apply 50+ common web app features. There's over 20+ hours of video.