how to use python environment variables

Environment variables are a crucial aspect of configuring and customizing software applications. They allow you to store configuration settings, API keys, database URLs, and other sensitive information outside of your codebase. In Python, the os module provides a convenient way to work with environment variables.
To set an environment variable, you can use the os module's environ dictionary. Here's an example:
In this example, we set an environment variable named API_KEY with a placeholder value. In a real-world scenario, you would replace 'your_api_key_here' with your actual API key.
In this example, we attempt to retrieve the value of the API_KEY environment variable. If the variable is set, its value will be printed; otherwise, a message indicating that the key is not set will be displayed.
For more complex applications or projects with multiple contributors, it's common to use a .env file to manage environment variables. The python-dotenv library simplifies the process of loading variables from a file.
Create a file named .env in your project directory and add your environment variables:
By using load_dotenv(), the python-dotenv library reads the variables from the .env file and loads them into the environment.
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