Any way to provide password dynamically

[boronine]

I want my colleagues to be able to login to various databases without fiddling around with copying and pasting passwords. We already have a highly automated development environment using dev containers.

The only way SQLTools can accept passwords is if they are hardcoded into settings, but that requires excluding settings from git.

Any of these will solve the problem (or any other approach that lends itself to automation):

• Setting connections with environment variables #1355
• pgDriver - read connection password from an environment variable #1484
• Use pgpass file #512
• Make SQL Tools settings recognise VS Code variables and environment variables. #857

[gjsjohnmurray]

Since #1066 it has been possible for drivers to use a sqltools-driver-credentials AuthenticationProvider that allows users to store credentials in their workstation keystore. Does this work for your scenario?

[boronine]

I can't figure out how to make the AuthenticationProvider solution work.

I need to provision everything automatically via settings.json or devcontainer.json, and this option doesn't seem to be documented in the config format.

When I create a new connection manually, the option seems to work, but now I'm confused as to where my password is actually saved... ChatGPT says it should be saved in Keychain Access, but I can't find it there.

In any case, even if it was configurable in JSON, this solution doesn't seem to lend itself to automation because it forces you to enter password manually and click through this modal:

[gjsjohnmurray]

The AuthenticationProvider approach won't suit your automation scenario.

Can your provisioning generate an XYZ.code-workspace file that contains a single entry in its folders object and a sqltools.connections object in its settings section, with plaintext credentials in there? Then the 'user' would open this workspace in VS Code rather than opening the folder directly.