Quick Setup¶

Let's start with a quick setup. Suppose your project has a .env file with the following content:

# .env
API_URL="http://localhost:8000"
DB_URL="db://fake_user:fake_password@local_db:0000/name"

Import the env object from stela and use it:

# settings.py
from stela import env

API_URL = env.API_URL  # http://localhost:8000
DATABASE_URL_CONNECTION = env.DB_URL  # db://fake_user:fake_password@local_db:0000/name

Now, create a .env.local file and add the real secret value:

# .env.local
DB_URL="db://real_user:real_password@real_db:0000/name"

# settings.py
from stela import env

API_URL = env.API_URL  # http://localhost:8000
DATABASE_URL_CONNECTION = env.DB_URL  # db://real_user:real_password@real_db:0000/name

This is because Stela will first load the content from .env file, and then will override the values with the content from .env.local file.

But how about the environments?¶

Ok, let's add another file: .env.remote:

# .env.remote
API_URL="https://remote.api.com"

And we export the STELA_ENV variable:

export STELA_ENV=remote

When we run the python code, we will get the following values:

from stela import env

API_URL = env.API_URL  # https://remote.api.com
DATABASE_URL_CONNECTION = env.DB_URL  # db://real_user:real_password@real_db:0000/name

What's happened here?

Stela will load the content from .env file.
Then, it will load the content from .env.local file, overriding previous content, because Stela always looks for .env.*.local files
Finally, it will load the content from .env.remote file, overriding previous content, because STELA_ENV is set to remote.

Ok, but what if I just define the variable in the environment?¶

No problem! Stela will always look for environment variables first. So, if you export the DB_URL variable:

export DB_URL="db://env_user:env_password@env_db:0000/name"

When you run the python code, you will get the following values:

from stela import env
API_URL = env.API_URL  # https://remote.api.com
DATABASE_URL_CONNECTION = env.DB_URL  # db://env_user:env_password@env_db:0000/name

This is because Stela will first look for environment variables, and then will load the content from .env files.

And that's it! Now you can use Stela to manage your settings in any python project.

Stela is highly customizable, so you can use it in any way you want. It can handle several use cases you can have handling your project settings.

For the next pages, let's see each one of these options with more details.