CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.xsecret-key
Achxy_
Achxy_

Reputation: 1201

Parsing env files

How do safely store passwords and API keys within an .env file and properly parse them? using python?

I want to store passwords that I do not wish to push into public repos.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 10334

Answers (1)

Achxy_
Achxy_

Reputation: 1201

You may parse the key values of an .env file you can use os.getenv(key) where you replace key with the key of the value you want to access

Suppose the contents of the .env files are :

A=B
FOO=BAR
SECRET=VERYMUCH

You can parse the content like this :

import os

print(os.getenv("A"))
print(os.getenv("FOO"))
print(os.getenv("SECRET"))
# And so on...

Which would result in (output / stdout) :

B
BAR
VERYMUCH

Now, if you are using git version control and you never want yourself to push an environment file accidentally then add this to your .gitignore file and they'll be conveniently ignored.

.env

(Although you should make your life a bit easier by using an existing .gitignore template all of which by default ignore .env files)

Lastly :

  1. you can load .env just like a text file by doing :
with open(".env") as env:
    ...

and then proceed to manually parse it using regex

  1. In case for some reason if .env files aren't detected by your python script then use this module python-dotenv

You may make use of the aforementioned library like this :

from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()  # take environment variables from .env.

# Code of your application, which uses environment variables (e.g. from `os.environ` or
# `os.getenv`) as if they came from the actual environment.

Upvotes: 7

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