Use python-dotenv to Load Environment Variables from a .env file in Python

Python-dotenv lets you load environment variables from a .env file into your Python application. Here's how to implement it:

First, install python-dotenv using pip:

pip install python-dotenv

Create a .env file in your project root directory and add your environment variables:

API_KEY=your_secret_key_here
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@localhost/db
DEBUG=True

Load the variables in your Python code:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

load_dotenv()  # Load environment variables from .env

api_key = os.getenv('API_KEY')
database_url = os.getenv('DATABASE_URL')
debug = os.getenv('DEBUG')

For automatic loading, you can also use:

from dotenv import load_dotenv, find_dotenv

load_dotenv(find_dotenv())

Python-dotenv also supports setting default values and type casting:

debug = os.getenv('DEBUG', default=False)
port = int(os.getenv('PORT', 3000))

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