Options to hide ssid password in an ESP32 sketch - arduino

Question

I am using ESP32, but I assume the question is applicable to esp8266 or Arduino WIFI. That is why I extended my tags. Please let me know if I am wrong.
I have a working sketch that uses WIFI to send http requests.
My current code includes SSID and password in clear text:
const char *ssid = "my_secure_router";
const char *password = "clear_text_password_is_bad";
void initWifi(){
WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
Serial.println("");
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.println(WiFi.status());
Serial.print("*");
}
Serial.print("WiFi connected with IP: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}
While the code is working, I am not able to push the code to a git repository since it includes the password in clear text.
Is there any easy option to eliminate the clear text password from the above code?

Answer 1

People often do this by using a second file that's not checked into the repository. They'll often name the file secrets.h or config.h.
Then you'd change your code to look like:
#include "secrets.h"
void initWifi(){
WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
WiFi.begin(WIFI_SSID, WIFI_PASSWORD);
Serial.println("");
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.println(WiFi.status());
Serial.print("*");
}
Serial.print("WiFi connected with IP: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}
and put this in secrets.h:
#pragma once
#define WIFI_SSID "my_secure_router";
#define WIFI_PASSWORD "clear_text_password_is_bad";
The #pragma line stops the file from being processed if it's included twice, which avoids errors from WIFI_SSID and WIFI_PASSWORD being defined multiple times.
Then add secrets.h to .gitignore so that git won't check it in.
As a bonus, you might create a secrets.h-example file that has dummy strings for all the secrets that are stored in it.
Note that I changed the two strings from being C++ character array variables to preprocessor constants. There's really no benefit in this case to storing the strings in variables, and using preprocessor constants simplifies their use.