How to store a Python dictionary as an Environment Variable

Question

I am trying to store an Environment Variable that Python can read in as a Dictionary. If this is a bad idea, please let me know your suggestions, I am eager to learn. I'm worried that if I store the data as many environment variables it might become hard to manage.

I programmed a Raspberry Pi to unlock a door based off the Caller ID's of incoming phone calls to a Twilio number, it is working great. I want to share my code on Github for feedback but I do not want to share my list of phone numbers with the world so I am trying to save it as an environment variable and then let Python read it in.

The phone numbers are in a Python Dictionary like this.

building_admins = {
    "+27792955555": "De Wet",
    "+27722855555": "Marysol",
    "+27878085555": "Blomerus",
}

I am trying to save it as an Environment Variable like this on Ubuntu 14.04

export BUILDING_ADMINS='{
    "+27792955555": "De Wet",
    "+27722855555": "Marysol",
    "+27878085555": "Blomerus",
}'

1) I can't get Linux to save the environment variable, is there something I could do to make it work?

2) I feel like there must be a better way to do this and I am going in the wrong direction but nothing I seem to find with Googling is solving the problem I am facing. Please point me in the right direction.

Answer 1

There is a option named environs, unfortunately, the way of exporting is a little different from the one you want, but I will suggest you because can be an alternative for you or other people (I needed to do this another day).

https://pypi.org/project/environs/

pip install environs

You can export via terminal or even creating a .env file

export BUILDING_ADMINS=+27792955555=De Wet,+27722855555=Marysol, +27878085555=Blomerus

In the code:

from environs import Env

env = Env()
env.read_env() // to allow reading from .env file

building_admins = env.dict('BUILDING_ADMINS', subcast=str)

result:

print(building_admins)

{
    "+27792955555": "De Wet",
    "+27722855555": "Marysol",
    "+27878085555": "Blomerus",
}