Managing Environment Variables and Secrets
Learn to configure FastAPI for different environments safely using environment variables and secret management.
Why Externalize Configuration?
Hardcoding database URLs, API keys, or debug flags into your code is dangerous and inflexible.
The 12-factor app approach stores configuration in the environment, so the same image runs in dev, staging, and production with different settings.
Reading Environment Variables
Python reads variables via os.environ or os.getenv with a default.
import os
DATABASE_URL = os.getenv("DATABASE_URL", "sqlite:///./dev.db")
DEBUG = os.getenv("DEBUG", "false").lower() == "true"All lessons in this course
- Dockerizing FastAPI Applications
- Deploying with Gunicorn & Uvicorn
- Cloud Deployment Strategies
- Managing Environment Variables and Secrets