Why? 🤷

We found ourselves repeating code for commonly used fields on each new Phoenix project/App ...
We wanted a much easier/faster way of building apps so we created a collection of pre-defined fields with built-in validation, sanitising and security. Fields makes defining Ecto Schemas faster and more precise.

What? 💭

An Elixir package that helps you add popular custom types to your Phoenix/Ecto schemas so you can build apps faster!

@dwyl we are firm believers that personal data (Personally Identifiable Information (PII)) should be encrypted "at rest" i.e. all "user" data should be encrypted before being stored in the database. This project makes hashing, encryption and decryption for secure data storage much easier for everyone.

This package was born out of our research into the best/easiest way to encrypt data in Phoenix: dwyl/phoenix-ecto-encryption-example

Who? 👥

This module is for people building Elixir/Phoenix apps who want to ship simpler and more maintainable code.

We've attempted to make Fields as beginner-friendly as possible.
If you get stuck using it or anything is unclear, please ask for help!

How? ✅

Start using Fields in your Phoenix App today with these 3 easy steps:

1. Add the fields hex package to deps in mix.exs 📦

Add the fields package to your list of dependencies in your mix.exs file:

def deps do
  [
    {:fields, "~> 2.10.3"}
  ]
end

Once you have saved the mix.exs file, run mix deps.get in your terminal to download.

2. Ensure you have the necessary environment variables 🔑

In order to use Encryption and Hashing, you will need to have environment variables defined for ENCRYPTION_KEYS and SECRET_KEY_BASE respectively.

export ENCRYPTION_KEYS=nMdayQpR0aoasLaq1g94FLba+A+wB44JLko47sVQXMg=
export SECRET_KEY_BASE=GLH2S6EU0eZt+GSEmb5wEtonWO847hsQ9fck0APr4VgXEdp9EKfni2WO61z0DMOF

If you need to create a secure SECRET_KEY_BASE value, please see: How to create Phoenix secret_key_base
And for ENCRYPTION_KEYS, see: How to create encryption keys

In our case we use a .env file to manage our environment variables. See: github.com/dwyl/learn-environment-variables
This allows us to securely manage our secret keys in dev without the risk of accidentally publishing them on Github.
When we deploy our Apps, we use our service provider's built-in key management service to securely store Environment Variables. e.g: Environment Variables on Heroku

3. Apply the relevant field(s) to your schema 📝

Each field can be used in place of an Ecto type when defining your schema.

An example for defining a "user" schema using Fields:

schema "users" do
  field :first_name, Fields.Name            # Length validated and encrypted
  field :email, Fields.EmailEncrypted       # Validates email then encrypts
  field :address, Fields.AddressEncrypted   # Trims address string then encrypts
  field :postcode, Fields.PostcodeEncrypted # Validates postcode then encrypts
  field :password, Fields.Password          # Hash password with argon2 industry standard

  timestamps()
end

Each field is defined as an Ecto type, with the relevant callbacks. So when you call Ecto.Changeset.cast/4 in your schema's changeset function, the field will be correctly validated. For example, calling cast on the :email field will ensure it is a valid format for an email address RFC 5322.

When you load one of the fields into your database, the corresponding dump/1 callback will be called, ensuring it is inserted into the database in the correct format. In the case of Fields.EmailEncrypted, it will encrypt the email address using a given encryption key before inserting it.

Likewise, when you load a field from the database, the load/1 callback will be called, giving you the data in the format you need. Fields.EmailEncrypted will be decrypted back to plaintext. This all happens 100% transparently to the developer. It's like magic. But the kind where you can actually understand how it works! (if you're curious, read the code)

Each Field optionally defines an input_type/0 function. This will return an atom representing the Phoenix.HTML.Form input type to use for the Field. For example: Fields.DescriptionPlaintextUnlimited.input_type returns :textarea which helps us render the correct field in a form.

The fields DescriptionPlaintextUnlimited and HtmlBody uses html_sanitize_ex to remove scripts and help keep your project safe. HtmlBody is able to display basic html elements whilst DescriptionPlaintextUnlimited displays text. Remember to use raw when rendering the content of your DescriptionPlaintextUnlimited and HtmlBody fields so that symbols such as & (ampersand) and Html are rendered correctly. e.g: <p><%= raw @product.description %></p>

Available Fields 📖

• Address - an address for a physical location. Validated and stored as a (plaintext) String.
• AddressEncrypted - an address for a customer or user which should be stored encrypted for data protection.
• DescriptionPlaintextUnlimited - filters any HTML/JS to avoid security issues. Perfect for blog post comments.
• Encrypted - a general purpose encrypted field. converts any type of data to_string and then encrypts it.
• EmailEncrypted - validate and strongly encrypt email address to ensure they are kept private and secure.
• EmailHash - when an email needs to be looked up fast without decrypting. Salted and hashed with :sha256.
• EmailPlaintext - when an email address is public there's no advantage to encrypting it. e.g. a customer support email.
• Hash - a general-purpose hash field using :sha256, useful if you need to store the hash of a value. (one way)
• HtmlBody - useful for storing HTML data e.g in a CMS.
• Name - used for personal names that need to be kept private/secure. Max length 35 characters. AES Encrypted.
• Password - passwords hashed using argon2.
• PhoneNumberEncrypted - a phone number that should be kept private gets validated and encrypted.
• PhoneNumber - when a phone number is not sensitive information and can be stored in plaintext.
• Postcode - validated postcode stored as plaintext.
• PostcodeEncrypted - validated and encrypted.
• Url - validate a URL and store as plaintext (not encrypted) String
• UrlEncrypted - validate a URL and store as AES encrypted Binary
• IpAddressPlaintext - validate an ipv4 and ipv6 address and store as plaintext
• IpAddressHash - hash for ipv4 or ipv6
• IpAddressEncrypted - validate an ipv4 and ipv6 address and store as AES encrypted Binary

Detailed documentation available on HexDocs: hexdocs.pm/fields

Testing

mix t

Coverage

mix c

Contributing ➕

If there is a field that you need in your app that is not already in the Fields package, please open an issue so we can add it! github.com/dwyl/fields/issues

Background / Further Reading 🔗

If you want an in-depth understanding of how automatic/transparent encryption/decryption works using Ecto Types, see: github.com/dwyl/phoenix-ecto-encryption-example

If you are rusty/new on Binaries in Elixir, take a look at this post by @blackode:
https://medium.com/blackode/playing-with-elixir-binaries-strings-dd01a40039d5

Questions?

If you have questions, please open an issue: github.com/dwyl/fields/issues

A recent/good example is: issues/169

Why do we have both EmailEncrypted and EmailHash ?

EmailEncrypted and EmailHash serve very different purposes. Briefly: with encryption the output is always different is meant for safely storing sensitive data that we want to decrypt later whereas with hash the output is always the same it cannot be "unhashed" but can be used to check a value, i.e. you can lookup a hashed value in a database.

The best way to understand how these work is to see it for yourself. Start an IEx session in your terminal:

iex -S mix

You should see output similar to the following:

Erlang/OTP 24 [erts-12.0.3] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [ds:8:8:10] [async-threads:1] [jit] [dtrace]

Compiling 23 files (.ex)
Generated fields app
Interactive Elixir (1.12.3) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)

That confirms the fields module has compiled.

Encryption

Now that you've initialized IEx, issue the following commands:

iex> email = "[email protected]"

"[email protected]"

iex(2)> encrypted = Fields.AES.encrypt(email)

<<48, 48, 48, 49, 20, 6, 117, 239, 107, 251, 80, 156, 109, 46, 6, 75, 119, 89,
  72, 163, 156, 243, 60, 6, 17, 166, 130, 239, 93, 222, 65, 186, 185, 78, 77, 2,
  80, 194, 241, 31, 28, 24, 155, 172, 208, 185, 142, 64, 65, 127>>

Note: the Fields.EmailEncrypted uses the AES.encrypt/1 behind the scenes, that's why we are using it here directly. You could just as easily have written: {:ok, encrypted} = Fields.EmailEncrypted.dump(email) this is just a shorthand.

That output <<48, 48, 48 ... 64, 65, 127>> is a bitstring which is the sequence of bits in memory. The encrypted data - usually called "ciphertext" - is not human readable, that's a feature. But if you want to decrypt it back to its human-readable form, simply run:

iex(3)> decrypted = Fields.AES.decrypt(encrypted)

"[email protected]"

So we know that an encrypted value can be decrypted. In the case of EmailEncrypted this is useful when we want to send someone an email message. For security/privacy, we want their sensitive personal data to be stored encrypted in the Database, but when we need to decrypt it to send them a message, it's easy enough.

If you run the Fields.AES.encrypt/1 function multiple times in your terminal, you will always see different output:

iex(4)> Fields.AES.encrypt(email)
 <<48, 48, 48, 49, 168, 212, 210, 53, 233, 104, 27, 235, 199, 43, 87, 74, 3, 2,
   211, 114, 187, 229, 157, 182, 37, 34, 209, 37, 66, 160, 30, 126, 238, 180,
   146, 133, 227, 53, 245, 228, 119, 191, 117, 247, 37, 176, 130, 110, ...>>
iex(5)> Fields.AES.encrypt(email)
 <<48, 48, 48, 49, 196, 170, 48, 97, 75, 206, 148, 204, 41, 149, 64, 50, 27, 56,
   112, 19, 53, 108, 86, 153, 154, 53, 53, 97, 232, 133, 97, 88, 214, 254, 40,
   84, 65, 227, 75, 123, 212, 222, 63, 221, 176, 130, 11, 173, ...>>
iex(6)> Fields.AES.encrypt(email)
 <<48, 48, 48, 49, 201, 239, 104, 101, 140, 232, 0, 216, 183, 168, 220, 130, 24,
   236, 205, 220, 239, 112, 112, 168, 86, 235, 84, 115, 108, 116, 16, 234, 184,
   72, 111, 144, 245, 1, 125, 207, 230, 68, 126, 111, 84, 83, 23, 90, ...>>
iex(7)> Fields.AES.encrypt(email)
 <<48, 48, 48, 49, 176, 131, 145, 182, 128, 43, 11, 100, 253, 73, 179, 144, 139,
   45, 211, 156, 155, 117, 119, 59, 152, 148, 45, 36, 95, 141, 35, 242, 182, 51,
   235, 162, 186, 132, 23, 34, 174, 171, 157, 115, 54, 211, 124, 247, ...>>

The first 4 bytes <<48, 48, 48, 49, are the same because we are using the same encryption key. But the rest is always different.

Hashing

A hash function can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. i.e. any length of plaintext will result in the same length hash value. A hash function is one-way, it cannot be reversed or "un-hashed". The hash value is always the same for a given string of plaintext.

Try it in IEx:

iex(1)> email = "[email protected]"
"[email protected]"

iex(2)> Fields.Helpers.hash(:sha256, email)
<<95, 251, 251, 204, 181, 59, 239, 4, 218, 193, 35, 20, 223, 131, 219, 101, 30,
  17, 97, 146, 103, 115, 3, 185, 230, 137, 218, 137, 209, 111, 48, 236>>
iex(3)> Fields.Helpers.hash(:sha256, email)
<<95, 251, 251, 204, 181, 59, 239, 4, 218, 193, 35, 20, 223, 131, 219, 101, 30,
  17, 97, 146, 103, 115, 3, 185, 230, 137, 218, 137, 209, 111, 48, 236>>
iex(4)> Fields.Helpers.hash(:sha256, email)
<<95, 251, 251, 204, 181, 59, 239, 4, 218, 193, 35, 20, 223, 131, 219, 101, 30,
  17, 97, 146, 103, 115, 3, 185, 230, 137, 218, 137, 209, 111, 48, 236>>

The hash value is identical for the given input text in this case the email address "[email protected]".

If you use the Fields.EmailHash.dump/1 function, you will see the same hash value (because the same helper function is invoked):

iex(5)> Fields.EmailHash.dump(email)
{:ok,
 <<95, 251, 251, 204, 181, 59, 239, 4, 218, 193, 35, 20, 223, 131, 219, 101, 30,
   17, 97, 146, 103, 115, 3, 185, 230, 137, 218, 137, 209, 111, 48, 236>>}
iex(6)> Fields.EmailHash.dump(email)
{:ok,
 <<95, 251, 251, 204, 181, 59, 239, 4, 218, 193, 35, 20, 223, 131, 219, 101, 30,
   17, 97, 146, 103, 115, 3, 185, 230, 137, 218, 137, 209, 111, 48, 236>>}

When the EmailHash is stored in a database we can lookup an email address by hashing it and comparing it to the list.

The best way of visualizing this is to convert the hash value (bitstring) to base64 so that it is human-readable:

iex(1)> email = "[email protected]"
"[email protected]"

iex(2)> Fields.Helpers.hash(:sha256, email) |> :base64.encode
"X/v7zLU77wTawSMU34PbZR4RYZJncwO55onaidFvMOw="

iex(3)> Fields.Helpers.hash(:sha256, email) |> :base64.encode
"X/v7zLU77wTawSMU34PbZR4RYZJncwO55onaidFvMOw="

Imagine you have a database table called people that has just 3 columns: id, email_hash and email_encrypted

id	email_hash	email_encrypted
1	X/v7zLU77wTawSMU34PbZR4RYZJncwO55onaidFvMOw=	MDAwMc57Y1j0nhwOdw7EvNeUVEfYQoAr7aT6oX
2	+zXMhia/Z2I64nul6pqoDZTVM1q2K21Pby6GtPcm9iE=	MDAwMXnS1uwGN/cZRFkQgArm2Sbj9y+hnUJIS7
3	maY4IxoRSOSqm6qyJDrnEN1JQssJRqRGhzwOown4DPU=	MDAwMa4v0FBko++zqfAkfisXOLosQfrDLAdPax

With this "database" table, we can now lookup an email address to find out their id:

iex(4)> Fields.Helpers.hash(:sha256, "[email protected]") |> :base64.encode
"+zXMhia/Z2I64nul6pqoDZTVM1q2K21Pby6GtPcm9iE="

This matches the email_hash in the second row of our table, therefore Alice's id is 2 in the database.