Dotenv-CLI provides the dotenv command. dotenv loads the .env file from the current directory, puts the contents in the environment by either changing existing- or adding new environment variables, and executes the given command.

dotenv supports alternative .env files like .env.development via the -e or --dotenv parameters. This parameter can be repeated to load multiple files, the .env files will be loaded in the order they are provided.

With the --replace flag, dotenv also provides an option to completely replace the environment variables with the ones from the .env file, allowing you to control exactly which environment variables are set.

dotenv provides bash completion, so you can use dotenv like this:

$ dotenv make <TAB> all clean docs lint release test

dotenv-cli is available on PyPi, you can install it via:

$ pip install dotenv-cli

Alternatively, you can install dotenv-cli on Debian based distributions via:

# apt-get install dotenv-cli

Create an .env file in the root of your project and populate it with some values like so:

SOME_SECRET=donttrythisathome SOME_CONFIG=foo

Just prepend the command you want to run with the extra environment variables from the .env file with dotenv:

$ dotenv some-command

and those variables will be available in your environment variables.

The parser understands the following:

• Basic unquoted values (BASIC=basic basic)
• Lines starting with export (export EXPORT=foo), so you can source the file in bash
• Lines starting with # are ignored (# Comment)
• Empty values (EMPTY=) become empty strings
• Inner quotes are maintained in basic values: INNER_QUOTES=this 'is' a test or INNER_QUOTES2=this "is" a test
• White spaces are trimmed from unquoted values: TRIM_WHITESPACE= foo and maintained in quoted values: KEEP_WHITESPACE=" foo "
• Interpret escapes (e.g. \n) in double quoted values, keep them as-is in single quoted values.

Example .env file:

BASIC=basic basic export EXPORT=foo EMPTY= INNER_QUOTES=this 'is' a test INNER_QUOTES2=this "is" a test TRIM_WHITESPACE= foo KEEP_WHITESPACE=" foo " MULTILINE_DQ="multi\nline" MULTILINE_SQ='multi\nline' MULTILINE_NQ=multi\nline # # some comment

becomes:

$ dotenv env BASIC=basic basic EXPORT=foo EMPTY= INNER_QUOTES=this 'is' a test INNER_QUOTES2=this "is" a test TRIM_WHITESPACE=foo KEEP_WHITESPACE= foo MULTILINE_DQ=multi line MULTILINE_SQ=multi\nline MULTILINE_NQ=multi\nline