How to set environment variables from .env file

Question

Let's say I have .env file contains lines like below:

USERNAME=ABC
PASSWORD=PASS

Unlike the normal ones have export prefix so I cannot source the file directly.

What's the easiest way to create a shell script that loads content from .env file and set them as environment variables?

Answer 1

I'm using the Windows machine to run the WSL. Here is what I do to set environment variables from .env file that is created by Windows and made that an alias in ~/.zshrc

# ~/.zshrc 
# Load set environment variables from .env file
load_env() {
   if [ -f .env ]; then
      dos2unix .env
      export $(grep -v '^#' .env | xargs)
      echo "Set environment variables from .env file"
   else
      echo ".env file not found in the current directory"
   fi
 }
 alias le='load_env'

You should install the dos2unix to converting file .env to Unix format:

sudo apt-get install dos2unix

Hope this will help!

Answer 2

You can use an external command line tool which loads the environment variables from the desired .env.* file and runs the command of your choice directly, e.g. dotenvx or python-dotenv:

$ npm install @dotenvx/dotenvx --save
$ dotenvx run -f .env.example -- ./script.sh

$ pip install python-dotenv
$ dotenv -f .env.example run -- ./script.sh

Answer 3

To complete the excellent accepted answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43267603/1169705

If your lines are not valid shell

Also catch for blank lines, other bash will complain.

while IFS== read -r key value; do
  if [[ ! -z "$key" ]]; then
    printf -v "$key" %s "$value" && export "$key"
  fi
done <.env

Answer 4

This script works perfectly for me (Jun 2023).

#!/bin/sh

# Load environment variables from .env file
[ ! -f .env ] || export $(grep -v '^#' .env | xargs)

Example of .env file:

# Database settings
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432
DB_NAME=mydatabase
DB_USER=myuser
DB_PASSWORD=mypassword

# API keys
API_KEY=abc123
SECRET_KEY=def456

# Other settings
DEBUG_MODE=true
LOG_LEVEL=info

Answer 5

This is what I use:

load_dotenv(){
  # https://stackoverflow.com/a/66118031/134904
  # Note: you might need to replace "\s" with "[[:space:]]"
  source <("$1" | sed -e '/^#/d;/^\s*$/d' -e "s/'/'\\\''/g" -e "s/=\(.*\)/='\1'/g")
}

set -a
[ -f "test.env" ] && load_dotenv "test.env"
set +a

If you're using direnv, know that it already supports .env files out of the box :)

Add this to your .envrc:

[ -f "test.env" ] && dotenv "test.env"

Docs for direnv's stdlib: https://direnv.net/man/direnv-stdlib.1.html

Answer 6

Try comand below

export `source .env`

Answer 7

use command below on ubuntu

$ export $(cat .env)

Answer 8

If your lines are valid, trusted shell but for the export command

This requires appropriate shell quoting. It's thus appropriate if you would have a line like foo='bar baz', but not if that same line would be written foo=bar baz

set -a # automatically export all variables
source .env
set +a

---

If your lines are not valid shell

The below reads key/value pairs, and does not expect or honor shell quoting.

while IFS== read -r key value; do
  printf -v "$key" %s "$value" && export "$key"
done <.env

Answer 9

This will export everything in .env:

export $(xargs <.env)

Edit: this requires the environment values to not have whitespace. If this does not match your use case you can use the solution provided by Charles

Edit2: I recommend adding a function to your profile for this in any case so that you don't have to remember the details of set -a or how xargs works.

Answer 10

Found this:

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/12020/export-key-value-pairs-list-as-environment-variables

while read line; do export $line; done < <(cat input)

UPDATE So I've got it working as below:

#!/bin/sh
while read line; do export $line; done < .env