Secure Configuration Management with Python-dotenv

The Problem with Hard-Coding Configuration

Hard-coding configuration values in code can lead to security risks and deployment challenges. For example, consider the following code snippet:

PASSWORD=123
USERNAME=myusername

This approach has several drawbacks:

• Sensitive data is exposed in the code
• Changes to configuration values require code changes

Introducing Python-dotenv

Python-dotenv is a library that allows you to load environment variables from a .env file. This approach separates configuration from code and provides several benefits:

• Keep sensitive data out of code
• Use different configurations per environment

To use Python-dotenv, you’ll need to create a .env file with your configuration values. Here’s an example:

#.env
PASSWORD=123
USERNAME=myusername

Next, you can load the environment variables from the .env file using the load_dotenv() function:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os 

load_dotenv()

PASSWORD = os.getenv('PASSWORD') # 123
USERNAME = os.getenv('USERNAME') # myusername

This code loads environment variables from a .env file, allowing secure access to configuration values like PASSWORD and USERNAME.

Link to python-dotenv