dev-env.md

How to Setup Dotenv

Setup Procedure

This procedure describes how to setup documentation. The project name, TEMPLATE, used in this procedure is a placehold and should be replaced. (Capitalization of TEMPLATE is only used for emphasis.)

1. Install dotenv

Make sure the correct virtual environment is active.

$ pip install -U python-dotenv

2. Create .env file

$ # change to the root directory of the project repository
$ touch .env

3. Add environment variables to the .env file

# important environment variables
MEANING_OF_LIFE=42

4. Add .env file to .gitignore

The .env file many contain sensitive credential data; therefore, it shouldn't be version controlled.

5. Update main application to load environment variables

If using "pipenv", opening the shell will automatically load the environment variables from the .env file. If the .env files is modified, reload the environment variables by sourcing the file.

$ source .env

If not using "pipenv", the environment variables can be loaded programatically by adding the following lines to the main application file:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

Workflow

N/A

Directory Structure

The final directory structure looks like the following. Files and directories not related to testing are not shown.

TEMPLATE/              # project repository
├── TEMPLATE/          # main python package
│   ├── __init__.py    # python module package file
│   └── app.py         # main application program
└── .env               # dotenv file