python-decouple VS django-environ

Compare python-decouple vs django-environ and see what are their differences.

python-decouple

Strict separation of config from code. (by HBNetwork)

django-environ

Django-environ allows you to utilize 12factor inspired environment variables to configure your Django application. (by joke2k)
Our great sponsors
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
python-decouple django-environ
8 12
2,660 2,920
1.1% -
3.1 6.0
2 months ago about 1 month ago
Python Python
MIT License MIT License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

python-decouple

Posts with mentions or reviews of python-decouple. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-25.

django-environ

Posts with mentions or reviews of django-environ. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-11-13.
  • Setting up Django in a Better Way in 5 Minutes and Understanding How It Works
    8 projects | dev.to | 13 Nov 2023
    This Django Starter kit takes care of automated creation of virtual environment and installing of Python packages and setting up the database with bash scripts. In addition to PostgreSQL and TailwindCSS, all the sensitive values are taken care of in a .env file using django-environ package. The virtual environment is maintained using pip-tools.
  • Tricks for starting a new project
    3 projects | /r/django | 30 Nov 2022
    I used to do this but recently switched to using environment variables and now prefer this approach. Essentially you keep the single settings.py file that is generated with startproject, and use os.environ or os.getenv to set certain settings. Check out the FeedHQ settings.py for an example. I use direnv to automatically set my environment variables on my local machine, but django-environ is a popular alternative.
  • Switch between development and production
    2 projects | /r/django | 24 Sep 2022
    You might want to use django-environ package for this issue. Create a .env file in the project folder and follow these steps.
  • Six things I do every time I start a Django project
    3 projects | /r/django | 22 Jun 2022
    You could also use just django-environ package to both import config from .env and set a database url instead of using 2 dependencies. I also think of a couple things I could add to the list, maybe I should a write a blog post as well?
  • A complete guide to organizing settings in Django
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Nov 2021
    Docker does not do any quote parsing. For this same env file, it will set the value of the variable to `"foo"` (retaining the doublequotes in the value).

    Bash, of course, requires quotes if the variable contains any special bash characters (for example, literal JSON with curly brackets), but its quote handling is much more complex. django-environ doesn't interpret bash code; it just does simple quote chomping.

    There's no reliable .env syntax you can use that works in all 3 of django-environ, Docker, and bash; and any variable that should start and end with quotes that are not stripped off can't be expressed in a way that both Docker and django-environ will read in the same way.

    This may seem like a nit-picking edge case, but it's indicative of the design philosophy in django-environ of trying to be "helpful", but in ways which lead to subtle confusion. The way it guesses the path to your `.env` file is another example.

    [1] https://github.com/joke2k/django-environ/blob/main/environ/e...

    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Nov 2021
    The community writ large is already using django-environ to solve the problems you faced.

    https://github.com/joke2k/django-environ

    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 12 Nov 2021
    This isn't wrong advice but their tone of authority seems a bit misplaced.

    1. Make settings.py a package

    2. Please do not put anything more than imports in __init__.py since you are adding logic downstream.

    3. Use django environ https://github.com/joke2k/django-environ

    Now you keep your .env files, keep your setting overrides (settings/base.py, settings/local.py, etc) when needed AND you have defined a schema with non-string types for your environment variables.

    From the readme:

    env = environ.Env(

What are some alternatives?

When comparing python-decouple and django-environ you can also consider the following projects:

python-dotenv - Reads key-value pairs from a .env file and can set them as environment variables. It helps in developing applications following the 12-factor principles.

ConfigParser

environs - simplified environment variable parsing

django-dotenv - Loads environment variables from .env

dynaconf - Configuration Management for Python ⚙

hydra - Hydra is a framework for elegantly configuring complex applications

django-split-settings - Organize Django settings into multiple files and directories. Easily override and modify settings. Use wildcards and optional settings files.

ConfigObj - Python 3+ compatible port of the configobj library