How to give path of .env files?

[talhaanwarch]

I want to know if I put my env in another directory of server for security purpose. How do decouple know where it is located.

[henriquebastos]

It searches recursively on parent directories. If you choose some other branch, you'll have to inform it to decouple.

On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 8:08 AM Talha Anwar notifications@github.com wrote:

I want to know if I put my env in another directory of server for security purpose. How do decouple know where it is located.

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[talhaanwarch]

how can i inform the path? i mean how can I pass the argument, or set the path

[madjaqk]

I don't know if this is documented anywhere, but this is what I was able to work out from looking through the code:

from decouple import Config, RepositoryEnv

config = Config(RepositoryEnv("path/to/env_file"))

I would also like to know if there's a better/more official way I should be doing this.

[sidmitra]

Along similar lines, I have multiple env files eg. .env.local or .env.ci and in some cases i want to be able to run the same code/server with different env files. I couldn't find a way to get decouple to change the name of the file, atleast from reading the code.

I could probably modify the code from @madjaqk a bit to do it this way.

import os
from decouple import Config, RepositoryEnv

DOTENV_FILE = os.environ.get("DOTENV_FILE", ".env") # only place using os.environ
config = Config(RepositoryEnv(DOTENV_FILE))

That would allow me to do something like this.

DOTENV_FILE=".env" python server.py # or at a different terminal
DOTENV_FILE=".env.second" python another_server.py

I will try it out later today.

Not sure if this feature is useful enough for others to include. If so, i can send a PR to support a dynamic SUPPORTED var.

[henriquebastos]

how can i inform the path? i mean how can I pass the argument, or set the path

@talhaanwarch you should protect your code from having to deal with server layout particularities. What I do is, during build/deployment, simple add a symlink to a read only file as .env and all would workout fine.

[henriquebastos]

If so, i can send a PR to support a dynamic SUPPORTED var.

Thank you, @sidmitra. But this would work against python-decouple’s design assumptions.

As explained before, the whole idea is that your code should be decouples from instance configuration and layout.

[henriquebastos]

I don't know if this is documented anywhere, but this is what I was able to work out from looking through the code:

from decouple import Config, RepositoryEnv

config = Config(RepositoryEnv("path/to/env_file"))

I would also like to know if there's a better/more official way I should be doing this.

That’s the right way to do it @madjaqk. It's not documented because it is not encouraged. Your code should not know about it’s config file. From your code perspective everything is up and running from proper environment variables.

[henriquebastos]

Replied every one. Closing now.

[halla]

I may be overlooking something but I fail to see the downside in @sidmitra 's solution. To me it seems to decouple things even more, in this case from the specific project layout with predefined name and location for the config file.

[henriquebastos]

Hi @halla. The lib is already decoupled from the .env file since you can specify an alternative. I rather not introduce an environment variable into a lib that processes environment variables.

[halla]

Right, I would probably also avoid a separate feature now that I think of it, as there is an easy solution already. I guess I was reacting more to the decision not to document it (which was actually an answer to another similar solution but without the environment variable part, to be exact).

[alercelik]

Modifying the code a little bit more

from decouple import Config, RepositoryEnv, config

config = Config(RepositoryEnv(config("DOTENV_FILE", ".env")))