How to use python-dotenv's "find_dotenv" method

Question

I've pip-installed the python-dotenv module and am trying to use it as follows. I've created a directory test_dotenv with the following tree:

.
├── config.env
└── test_dotenv_subdir
    └── test_dotenv.py

The config.env file is simply an empty file, while test_dotenv.py contains the following:

import dotenv

found_dotenv = dotenv.find_dotenv()
print(found_dotenv)

However, if I run this script using python test_dotenv.py, I find that nothing gets printed; that is, found_dotenv is an empty string ('').

Am I missing something about how to use this method? As far as I can tell, here is the relevant part of the source code:

def _walk_to_root(path):
    """
    Yield directories starting from the given directory up to the root
    """
    if not os.path.exists(path):
        raise IOError('Starting path not found')

    if os.path.isfile(path):
        path = os.path.dirname(path)

    last_dir = None
    current_dir = os.path.abspath(path)
    while last_dir != current_dir:
        yield current_dir
        parent_dir = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(current_dir, os.path.pardir))
        last_dir, current_dir = current_dir, parent_dir


def find_dotenv(filename='.env', raise_error_if_not_found=False, usecwd=False):
    """
    Search in increasingly higher folders for the given file

    Returns path to the file if found, or an empty string otherwise
    """
    if usecwd or '__file__' not in globals():
        # should work without __file__, e.g. in REPL or IPython notebook
        path = os.getcwd()
    else:
        # will work for .py files
        frame_filename = sys._getframe().f_back.f_code.co_filename
        path = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(frame_filename))

    for dirname in _walk_to_root(path):
        check_path = os.path.join(dirname, filename)
        if os.path.exists(check_path):
            return check_path

    if raise_error_if_not_found:
        raise IOError('File not found')

    return ''

It seems like os.path.exists(check_path) keeps on returning False, so that the in the end an empty string is returned. Why is this not working as intended?

Answer 1

The dotenv package looks for a file that is literally called .env when you call find_dotenv rather than looking for files like .env. (e.g. config.env)

You can make your code find the desired file by passing the filename to find_dotenv, i.e.

import dotenv

found_dotenv = dotenv.find_dotenv('config.env')
print(found_dotenv)