Read Environment Variables in a Python Notebook

To read environment variables from a Python script or a Jupyter notebook, you would use this code—assuming you have a .env file in the directory where your script or notebook lives.

# .env
FOO=BAR
S3_BUCKET=YOURS3BUCKET
S3_SECRET_KEY=YOURSECRETKEYGOESHERE

# script.py
import os
print(os.environ.get('FOO')) # Empty

But this won't return the value of the environment variables, though, as you need to parse the contents of your .env file first.

For that, you can either use python-dotenv.

pip install python-dotenv

Then use this Python library to load your variables.

# Example from https://pypi.org/project/python-dotenv/
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

# OR, the same with increased verbosity
load_dotenv(verbose=True)

# OR, explicitly providing path to '.env'
from pathlib import Path  # Python 3.6+ only
env_path = Path('.') / '.env'
load_dotenv(dotenv_path=env_path)

# Print variable FOO
print(os.environ.get('FOO')) # Returns 'BAR'

Or load the variables manually with this script.

import os
env_vars = !cat ../script/.env
for var in env_vars:
    key, value = var.split('=')
    os.environ[key] = value

# Print variable FOO
print(os.environ.get('FOO')) # Returns 'BAR'