How to set environment variables in Python?

General Discussions
#1

How to set environment variables in Python?

#2

You can set an environment variable in Python using the os module. To set a variable named DEBUSSY to the string 1, use os.environ["DEBUSSY"] = "1". Later, to access this variable, simply use print(os.environ["DEBUSSY"]).

Remember that child processes inherit the environment of the parent process automatically, so no additional steps are needed to access this variable in child processes.

#3

Try using os.environ.setdefault() method that sets the environment variable MY_VAR to my_value if it is not already set.

 import os
os.environ.setdefault("MY_VAR", "my_value")
#4

Use dotenv package which is useful for managing environment variables in development environments without exposing them in version control.

First, install the package using pip:

pip install python-dotenv

Then, create a .env file in your project directory:

MY_VAR=my_value

In your Python code, load the environment variables from the .env file:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

load_dotenv()  # Load environment variables from .env file
my_var = os.getenv("MY_VAR")