env_utils 1.0.1

This library extends the standard library’s getenv function, allowing you to coerce the return value into a boolean or integer.

And that’s it.

It’s been released as a library because every project we have includes the same requirements - read in environment variables, coerce them into the correct type.

The problem is that environment variables are always stored as strings, but Python will evaluate any string (even “”) as True if cast to a boolean. This is almost never the desired behaviour. If you set an environment variable to “”, “0” or “False”, you want it to be False.

>>> os.environ['foo'] = "0"
>>> val = os.getenv('foo')
>>> val
"0"
>>> boo(val)
True

env_utils.getenv will coerce the value into the type you require:

>>> env_utils.getenv('foo')
"0"
>>> env_utils.getenv('foo', coerce=bool_)
False
>>> env_utils.getenv('foo', coerce=int_)
0

$ pip install python_env_utils

$ python -m unittest env_utils.tests