python application and credentials safety concern

[aster]

If the solution provided by ndc85430 is the best one I can achive, can someone give me an advice on how to login with google?

My need is only to send emails with gmail, from this google's post I think I am forced to use the more complex OAuth 2.0, to my understanding I can't use a simple API-KEY, please correct me if I am wrong

This is a sample of a google's credentials

Output:
{"installed":{"client_id":"my client id","project_id":"my project id":"https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth","token_uri":"https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token","auth_provider_x509_cert_url":"https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs","client_secret":"my client secret","redirect_uris":["urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob","http://localhost"]}}

Maybe my best possibility is to store the whole dictionary as a string in the environment variables and then convert it back to dictionary and pass it to google