title: How do the environment variables work within cloud9
body: <p>I want a safe way to store the <code>username</code> and <code>password</code> of an API without other people seeing it within my cloud9 Ruby on Rails app. Is it safe to save them as environment variables?</p>
  
  <p>I know my c9 code is public but are these variables also public?</p>
  
  <p>How do I access them within the rails console? I tried <code>ENV["VARIABLE_NAME"]</code> but this does not seem to work within the console. Is there anything else I should do?</p>