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

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

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

SECRET_KEY="your_secret_key"
DATABASE_PASSWORD="your_database_password"
...

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)

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

# settings.py

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

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

pip install python-dotenv --upgrade

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!

$ dotenv
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.
  --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.

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

from fabric.api import task, run, env

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

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

    see: https://github.com/theskumar/python-dotenv
    e.g: fab config:set,[key],[value]
    '''
    run('touch %(dotenv_path)s' % env)
    command = 'dotenv'
    command += ' -f %s ' % env.dotenv_path
    command += action + " " if action else " "
    command += key + " " if key else " "
    command += value if value else ""
    run(command)

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

Get all your remote config info with fab config

$ fab config:list
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env list
[...example.com] out: DJANGO_DEBUG="true"
[...example.com] out: DJANGO_ENV="test"

Set remote config variables with fab config:set,[key],[value]

$ fab config:set,hello,world
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env set hello world
[...example.com] out: hello="world"

Get a single remote config variables with fab config:get,[key]

$ fab config:get,hello
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env get hello
[...example.com] out: hello="world"

Delete a remote config variables with fab config:unset,[key]

$ fab config:unset,hello
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env unset hello
[...example.com] out: unset hello

Thanks entirely to fabric and not one bit to this project, you can chain commands like sofab config:set,[key1],[value1] config:set,[key2],[value2]

$ fab config:set,hello,world config:set,foo,bar config:set,fizz,buzz
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env set hello world
[...example.com] out: hello="world"
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env set foo bar
[...example.com] out: foo="bar"
[...example.com] Executing task 'config'
[...example.com] run: dotenv -f /home/me/webapps/myapp/myapp/.env set fizz buzz
[...example.com] out: fizz="buzz"

That's it. example.com, or whoever your non-paas host is, is now 1 facor closer to an easy 12 factor app.

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

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