envkey-python

Integrate EnvKey with your Python projects to keep API keys, credentials, and other configuration securely and automatically in sync for developers and servers.

Compatible with Python 2 and 3.

v2

Now that EnvKey v2 has been released, you can find version 2 of this package here.

Using v2 requires an EnvKey v2 organization (it won't work with ENVKEYs generated in a v1 org).

Here's a guide on migrating from v1 to v2.

To continue using version 1 of this package, make sure you specify ==1.* when installing with pip so that you don't accidentally install v2.

Installation

$ pip install envkey==1.*

Then at the entry point of your application:

import envkey

For Django, you should put the above in manage.py and wsgi.py. Also see the note on casting below if you're migrating from django-environ.

Usage

Generate an ENVKEY in the EnvKey App. Then set ENVKEY=..., either in a gitignored .env file in the root of your project (in development) or in an environment variable (on servers).

Now all your EnvKey variables will be available in os.environ.

Or as a bit of syntactic sugar to avoid needing to always import os alongside envkey, you can call envkey.get, which delegates to os.environ.get. For example:

import envkey

my_var = envkey.get("SOME_ENVKEY_VAR")

Errors

The package will throw an error if an ENVKEY is missing or invalid.

Example

Assume you have STRIPE_SECRET_KEY set for the development environment in the EnvKey App. You generate a local development ENVKEY.

In your project's gitignored .env file:

# .env
ENVKEY=GsL8zC74DWchdpvssa9z-nk7humd7hJmAqNoA

In app.py:

stripe.api_key = os.environ['STRIPE_SECRET_KEY']

Or using the envkey.get sugar:

stripe.api_key = envkey.get('STRIPE_SECRET_KEY')

Now STRIPE_SECRET_KEY will stay automatically in sync for all the developers on your team.

For a server, generate a server ENVKEY in the EnvKey App, then set the ENVKEY as an environment variable instead of putting it in a .env file.

Now your servers will stay in sync as well. If you need to rotate your STRIPE_SECRET_KEY you can do it in a few seconds in the EnvKey App, restart your servers, and you're good to go. All your team's developers and all your servers will have the new value.

Overriding Vars

This package will not overwrite existing environment variables or additional variables set in a .env file. This can be convenient for customizing environments that otherwise share the same configuration. You can also use sub-environments in the EnvKey App for this purpose.

Working Offline

This package caches your encrypted config in development so that you can still use it while offline. Your config will still be available (though possibly not up-to-date) the next time you lose your internet connection. If you do have a connection available, envkey will always load the latest config. Your cached encrypted config is stored in $HOME/.envkey/cache

For caching purposes, it's assumed you're in development mode when a .env file exists in the root of your project.

Disabling autoload

If you'd like to have more control over how your config is loaded, you can prevent the package from auto-loading on import by setting ENVKEY_DISABLE_AUTOLOAD=1 either in your .env file or as an environment variable.

You can then load your config explicitly like this:

import envkey

envkey.load(cache_enabled=True, dot_env_enabled=True, dot_env_path=".env")

For even more flexibility, you can just fetch your config as a dict (without setting it on os.environ) like this:

import envkey
import os

config = envkey.fetch_env(os.environ['ENVKEY'], cache_enabled=True)

django-environ casting

If you happen to be migrating from django-environ to EnvKey, watch out for the fact that EnvKey does not cast variables to booleans or any other non-string types as django-environ does. All variables set by EnvKey will be strings in accordance with the cross-platform environment variable standard. See: https://twitter.com/manishsinhaha/status/1265746057377361921

envkey-fetch binaries

If you look in the ext directory of this package, you'll find a number of envkey-fetch binaries for various platforms and architectures. These are output by the envkey-fetch Go library. It contains EnvKey's core cross-platform fetching, decryption, verification, web of trust, redundancy, and caching logic. It is completely open source.

x509 error / ca-certificates

On a stripped down OS like Alpine Linux, you may get an x509: certificate signed by unknown authority error when this package attempts to load your config. envkey-fetch tries to handle this by including its own set of trusted CAs via gocertifi, but if you're getting this error anyway, you can fix it by ensuring that the ca-certificates dependency is installed. On Alpine you'll want to run:

apk add --no-cache ca-certificates

Further Reading

For more on EnvKey in general:

Read the docs.

Read the integration quickstart.

Read the security and cryptography overview.

Need help? Have questions, feedback, or ideas?

Post an issue or email us: [email protected].