How to access environment variable values?

Question

I set an environment variable that I want to access in my Python application. How do I get its value?

Answer 1

.env File

Here is my .env file (I changed multiple characters in each key to prevent people hacking my accounts).

SECRET_KEY=6g18169690e33af0cb10f3eb6b3cb36cb448b7d31f751cde
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=18df6c6e95ab3832c5d09486779dcb1466ebbb12b141a0c4
DATABASE_URL='postgres://drjpczkqhnuvkc:f0ba6afd133c53913a4df103187b2a34c14234e7ae4b644952534c4dba74352d@ec2-54-146-4-66.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5432/ddnl5mnb76cne4'
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIBUGFPPLQFTFVDVIFE
DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=COMING SOON
MAILCHIMP_API_KEY=a9782cc1adcd8160907ab76064411efe-us17
MAILCHIMP_EMAIL_LIST_ID=5a6a2c63b7
STRIPE_PUB_KEY=pk_test_51HEF86ARPAz7urwyGw9xwLkgbgfCYT48LttlwjEkb88I7Ljb5soBtuKXBaPiKfuu0Cx2BzIowR3jJFkC8ybFBAEf00DFY46tB8
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_test_19HEF55BCEAz7urwytx7tO3QCxV4R8DEFXbqj6esg7OKuybiSTI8iJD8mmJUQpg4RKENxuS04DKOCzYHpDkAjUttO00LOmsT5Eg

settings

I was told my data was corrupted. I was struggling to work out what was going on. I had a suspicion the values from .env were not being passed into my settings file.

print(os.environ.get('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'))
print(os.environ.get('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'))
print(os.environ.get('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'))
print(os.environ.get('DATABASE_URL'))
print(os.environ.get('SECRET_KEY'))
print(os.environ.get('DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC'))
print(os.environ.get('EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD'))
print(os.environ.get('MAILCHIMP_API_KEY'))
print(os.environ.get('MAILCHIMP_EMAIL_LIST_ID'))
print(os.environ.get('STRIPE_PUB_KEY'))
print(os.environ.get('STRIPE_SECRET_KEY'))

The only value being printed correctly was the SECRET_KEY. I reviewed the .env file and for the life of me could not see any reason why the SECRET_KEY was working and nothing else.

I got everything working eventually by putting this above the print statements.

from dotenv import load_dotenv   #for python-dotenv method
load_dotenv()                    #for python-dotenv method

And doing

pip install -U python-dotenv

I am still not sure why SECRET_KEY was working when all the others were broken.