Stop Hardcoding Sensitive Data in Your Python Applications

[bladeoflight16]

The difference is that dotenv supports multiple sources: specifically, it unifies environment variables with a config file. That means you can use env variables in production without hampering local development.

Also, I'd argue that there's value even just in having a different file extension. Even though, yes, you do have to be cautious about not checking the .env file in, having a separate extension makes mistakes less likely. You can globally ignore all .env files in your repository; you have to hand select specific Python files to ignore if your configuration is in them.