# Maintain IDs/Keys from Services

You would definitely come up with this question: "How am I going to store the template ID from other services?".

Well, it is simple, I will give you some options.

There are 2 identifiers that you can use:

* uuid
* key (unique key)

### Hardcoded ID/Key

Yes, simple & straightforward. You can go to the [Console UI](https://docking.shipsaas.tech/getting-started/console-ui) and create a template for your service.

Then get the ID and put it as a `constant` in your code.

The one drawback is that you have to change the ID if you create another template or create more constants. I know some systems, maintainers/DevOps won't let you deploy multiple times a day.

This method works great for those applications that follow the Trunk-based development (CI/CD best practice, multiple deployments every day).

### ENV Configuration

Yes, you can create a new ENV variable and put it there. It is not so different from the above way, but at least, you can change the `.env` file then gratefully restart the server.

It also has the same drawback as the Hardcoded ID/Key, if you're going to introduce a new template.

### Dynamic Configuration

I think these days, most of the applications do have the dynamic configuration, where you store the configurations in the database, and you have your own Dashboard/Console to create/update/delete that configuration.

```
getDynamicConfig('templates.contract_template_id'); // will return the value from DB
```

### New table

Same as above way, but putting the template IDs in a dedicated table eg `templates`.

The table's structure is just simply like this:

* id (generated id)
* external\_template\_id (template's ID from DocKing)
* name
* created\_at

And that's all.

Feel free to share with others for another cool way of yours 😉