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