setting an environment variable in virtualenv

Question

I have a Heroku project that uses environment variables to get its configuration  but I use virtualenv to test my app locally first   Is there a way to set the environment variables defined on the remote machine inside virtualenv

User · Answer

Using only virtualenv  without virtualenvwrapper   setting environment variables is easy through the activate script you sourcing in order to activate the virtualenv   Run   nano YOUR ENV bin activate   Add the environment variables to the end of the file like this   export KEY VALUE   You can also set a similar hook to unset the environment variable as suggested by Danilo Bargen in his great answer above if you need

User · Answer

If you re already using Heroku  consider running your server via Foreman  It supports a  env file which is simply a list of lines with KEY VAL that will be exported to your app before it runs

User · Answer

While there are a lot of nice answers here  I didn t see a solution posted that both includes unsetting environment variables on deactivate and doesn t require additional libraries beyond virtualenv  so here s my solution that just involves editing  bin activate  using the variables MY SERVER NAME and MY DATABASE URL as examples   There should be a definition for deactivate in the activate script  and you want to unset your variables at the end of it   deactivate                     Unset My Server s variables     unset MY SERVER NAME     unset MY DATABASE URL     Then at the end of the activate script  set the variables     Set My Server s variables export MY SERVER NAME   lt domain for My Server gt   export MY DATABASE URL   lt url for database gt     This way you don t have to install anything else to get it working  and you don t end up with the variables being left over when you deactivate the virtualenv

User · Answer

In case you re using virtualenvwrapper  I highly recommend doing so   you can define different hooks  preactivate  postactivate  predeactivate  postdeactivate  using the scripts with the same names in  VIRTUAL ENV bin   You need the postactivate hook    workon myvenv    cat  VIRTUAL ENV bin postactivate    bin bash   This hook is run after this virtualenv is activated  export DJANGO DEBUG True export S3 KEY mykey export S3 SECRET mysecret    echo  DJANGO DEBUG True  If you want to keep this configuration in your project directory  simply create a symlink from your project directory to  VIRTUAL ENV bin postactivate    rm  VIRTUAL ENV bin postactivate   ln -s  env postactivate  VIRTUAL ENV bin postactivate  You could even automate the creation of the symlinks each time you use mkvirtualenv  Cleaning up on deactivate Remember that this wont clean up after itself  When you deactivate the virtualenv  the environment variable will persist  To clean up symmetrically you can add to  VIRTUAL ENV bin predeactivate    cat  VIRTUAL ENV bin predeactivate    bin bash   This hook is run before this virtualenv is deactivated  unset DJANGO DEBUG    deactivate    echo  DJANGO DEBUG  Remember that if using this for environment variables that might already be set in your environment then the unset will result in them being completely unset on leaving the virtualenv  So if that is at all probable you could record the previous value somewhere temporary then read it back in on deactivate  Setup    cat  VIRTUAL ENV bin postactivate    bin bash   This hook is run after this virtualenv is activated  if    -n  SOME VAR    then     export SOME VAR BACKUP  SOME VAR fi export SOME VAR apple    cat  VIRTUAL ENV bin predeactivate    bin bash   This hook is run before this virtualenv is deactivated  if    -n  SOME VAR BACKUP    then     export SOME VAR  SOME VAR BACKUP     unset SOME VAR BACKUP else     unset SOME VAR fi  Test    echo  SOME VAR banana    workon myenv    echo  SOME VAR apple    deactivate    echo  SOME VAR banana

User · Answer

To activate virtualenv in env directory and export envinroment variables stored in  env use     source env bin activate  amp  amp  set -a  source  env  set  a

User · Answer

Locally within an virtualenv there are two methods you could use to test this  The first is a tool which is installed via the Heroku toolbelt  https   toolbelt heroku com    The tool is foreman  It will export all of your environment variables that are stored in a  env file locally and then run app processes within your Procfile   The second way if you re looking for a lighter approach is to have a  env file locally then run   export   cat  env

User · Answer

Another way to do it that s designed for django  but should work in most settings  is to use django-dotenv      Original - https   github com jacobian django-dotenv More fully featured fork- https   github com tedtieken django-dotenv-rw   I wrote this to be able to set my remote  env settings on webfaction from my local command line  heroku spoiled me

User · Answer

Update  As of 17th May 2017 the README of autoenv states that direnv is probably the better option and implies autoenv is no longer maintained   Old answer  I wrote autoenv to do exactly this   https   github com kennethreitz autoenv

User · Answer

You could try   export ENVVAR value   in virtualenv root bin activate  Basically the activate script is what is executed when you start using the virtualenv so you can put all your customization in there

User · Answer

Install autoenv either by    pip install autoenv    or     brew install autoenv   And then create  env file in your virtualenv project folder    echo  source bin activate   gt   env   Now everything works fine

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