where Environment variables for python are saved

Question

I know to set an environment variable in python is to use os.environ['API_USER'] but where this variable is saved, I supposed this environment variable is saved in .env file but it wasn't.

on the console to retrieve all the environment variables use command: os.environ but don't know where are saved. need your help, Thanks!

Answer 1

Environment variables live in the memory, not on the disk. People usually save environment variables in files only for not having to do the same exporting of them by hand repetitively.

Also note that, environment variables are properties of operating system processes, and the process specific ones are passed on to all of the subprocesses of that process.

So when you run os.environ, it shows the environment variables and their values belonging to the python process (the executable that is being executed).

Answer 2

There is a way to use a .env file to store environment variables, using the python-dotenv package. Documentation can be found here

A simple example would be to create a .env file with the contents:

API_USER=username

Then, in your code you can use:

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

Note that without specifying a path to the .env file it assumes it is in the same directory. For a more detailed example on specifying a path, see the documentation.

You can then access the environment variable using os.getenv('API_USER')