_______ .__   __. ____    ____
    |   ____||  \ |  | \   \  /   /
    |  |__   |   \|  |  \   \/   /
    |   __|  |  . `  |   \      /
 __ |  |____ |  |\   |    \    /
(__)|_______||__| \__|     \__/

python-dotenv

Reads the key,value pair from .env and adds them to environment variable. It is great of managing app settings during development and in production using 12-factor principles.

Do one thing, do it well!

• Usages
• Installation
• Command-line interface
• Setting config on remote servers
• Releated Projects
• Contributing
• Changelog

Usages

Assuming you have created the .env file along-side your settings module.

.
├── .env
└── settings.py

Add the following code to your settings.py

# settings.py
from os.path import join, dirname
from dotenv import load_dotenv

dotenv_path = join(dirname(__file__), '.env')
load_dotenv(dotenv_path)

Alternatively, you can use find_dotenv() method that will try to find a .env file by (a) guessing where to start using __file__ or the working directory -- allowing this to work in non-file contexts such as IPython notebooks and the REPL, and then (b) walking up the directory tree looking for the specified file -- called .env by default.

from dotenv import load_dotenv, find_dotenv
load_dotenv(find_dotenv())

Now, you can access the variables either from system environment variable or loaded from .env file. System environment variables gets higher precedence and it's advised not to include it in version control.

# settings.py

SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get("SECRET_KEY")
DATABASE_PASSWORD = os.environ.get("DATABASE_PASSWORD")

.env is a simple text file. With each environment variables listed per line, in the format of KEY="Value", lines starting with # is ignored.

SOME_VAR=someval
# I am a comment and that is OK
FOO="BAR"

Django

If you are using django you should add the above loader script at the top of wsgi.py and manage.py.

Installation

pip install -U python-dotenv

Command-line interface

A cli interface dotenv is also included, which helps you manipulate the .env file without manually opening it. The same cli installed on remote machine combined with fabric (discussed later) will enable you to update your settings on remote server, handy isn't it!

Usage: dotenv [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  This script is used to set, get or unset values from a .env file.

Options:
  -f, --file PATH                 Location of the .env file, defaults to .env
                                  file in current working directory.
  -q, --quote [always|never|auto]
                                  Whether to quote or not the variable values.
                                  Default mode is always.
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  get    Retrive the value for the given key.
  list   Display all the stored key/value.
  set    Store the given key/value.
  unset  Removes the given key.

Setting config on remote servers

We make use of excellent Fabric to acomplish this. Add a config task to your local fabfile, dotenv_path is the location of the absolute path of .env file on the remote server.

# fabfile.py

import dotenv
from fabric.api import task, run, env

# absolute path to the location of .env on remote server.
env.dotenv_path = '/opt/myapp/.env'

@task
def config(action=None, key=None, value=None):
    '''Manage project configuration via .env

    e.g: fab config:set,<key>,<value>
         fab config:get,<key>
         fab config:unset,<key>
         fab config:list
    '''
    run('touch %(dotenv_path)s' % env)
    command = dotenv.get_cli_string(env.dotenv_path, action, key, value)
    run(command)

Usage is designed to mirror the heroku config api very closely.

Get all your remote config info with fab config

$ fab config

Set remote config variables with fab config:set,<key>,<value>

$ fab config:set,hello,world

Get a single remote config variables with fab config:get,<key>

$ fab config:get,hello

Delete a remote config variables with fab config:unset,<key>

$ fab config:unset,hello

Thanks entirely to fabric and not one bit to this project, you can chain commands like so fab config:set,<key1>,<value1> config:set,<key2>,<value2>

$ fab config:set,hello,world config:set,foo,bar config:set,fizz=buzz

Releated Projects

• Honcho - For managing Procfile-based applications.
• django-dotenv
• django-environ
• django-configuration

Contributing

All the contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or send us a pull request.

This project is currently maintained by Saurabh Kumar and would not have been possible without the support of these awesome people.

Changelog

0.5.1

• Fix find_dotenv - it now start search from the file where this function is called from.

0.5.0

• Add find_dotenv method that will try to find a .env file. (Thanks @isms)

0.4.0

• cli: Added -q/--quote option to control the behaviour of quotes around values in .env. (Thanks @hugochinchilla).
• Improved test coverage.