Python: Handling environment variables

This documentation is part of the Creating a REST API guide. View the full guide here: Step-by-step guide to building a REST API with Flask in Python.

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Environment variables help you protect secrets like database credentials or API keys. Using them keeps sensitive data out of your codebase and Git history, and makes it easy to use different settings for each environment.

To manage environment variables, you can use the python-dotenv module. If you skipped the earlier install step, you can install it now:

pip install python-dotenv
pip freeze > requirements.txt

Create a .env file at your project root and add your development environment variables:

ENV="development"
DATABASE_PASSWORD="secretPassword"
THIRD_API_PRIVATE_KEY="secretKey"

Add .env to your .gitignore so it is not committed to Git:

echo ".env" >> .gitignore

You can access these variables in Python using os.environ.get():

import os

print(os.environ.get('ENV'))

The .env file is for development only. For production or staging, you can set environment variables directly in your Stackhero dashboard under your Python service configuration.