Evaluate boolean environment variable in Python

Question

How can I evaluate if a env variable is a boolean True, in Python? Is it correct to use:

if os.environ['ENV_VAR'] is True:       ....... 

Answer 1

I think this works well:

my_env = os.getenv("ENV_VAR", 'False').lower() in ('true', '1', 't') 

It allows: things like true, True, TRUE, 1, "1", TrUe, t, T, ...

Update: After I read the commentary of Klaas, I updated the original code my_env = bool(os.getenv(... to my_env = os.getenv(... because in will result in a bool type

Answer 2

All the same, but thats the most readable version for me:

DEBUG = (os.getenv('DEBUG', 'False') == 'True') 

Here anything but True will evaluate to False. DEBUG is False unless explicitly set to True in ENV