2.1. Use .env file to set module variables

.env files are commonly used to store environment variables for your project, usually containing sensitive information such as API keys, database passwords, and so on. For Python, the python-dotenv library can be used to load this information from a .env file into the Python runtime environment.

Here are the steps to use a .env file with the python-dotenv module in a Python project:

  1. Install the python-dotenv library

    You can install the python-dotenv library using pip, which is Python’s package manager. In your terminal, navigate to your project folder and run the following command:

    pip install python-dotenv

  2. Create the .env file

    At the root of your project, create a new file called .env. This is the file where you’ll store your environment variables.

    Each line defines a new environment variable. The variable name is followed by an equals sign and the variable value.

    Here’s an example of how you can set variables in the file:

    BLIZZARD_API_CLIENT_ID=a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9j0k1l2m3n4o5p6
BLIZZARD_API_CLIENT_SECRET=1a2b3c4d5e6f7g8h9i0j1k2l3m4n5o6p

  3. Use the environment variables in your Python code

    Now, in your Python code, you can load the environment variables from the .env file using the python-dotenv library. Here’s an example of how you can do this:

    from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

# Load the variables from the .env file
load_dotenv()

# Now you can access the variables directly from os.getenv
client_id = os.getenv("BLIZZARD_API_CLIENT_ID")
client_secret = os.getenv("BLIZZARD_API_CLIENT_SECRET")
client_region = os.getenv("BLIZZARD_API_REGION")

print(client_id, client_secret)

In this example, os.getenv(“client_id”) will return the string “a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8i9j0k1l2m3n4o5p6” (as set in the .env file), and so on for the other variables.

Finally, don’t forget to add .env to your .gitignore file to prevent accidentally committing sensitive information to a public git repository.

Note: If you’re using a virtual environment, you’ll need to install the python-dotenv library inside the virtual environment. Otherwise, you’ll get an error when you try to import the library.

By default, the python-ndev-blizzardapi library will look for the following environment variables:

  • BLIZZARD_API_CLIENT_ID - Your Blizzard API client ID

  • BLIZZARD_API_CLIENT_SECRET - Your Blizzard API client secret

  • BLIZZARD_API_REGION - The region to use for API requests (defaults to us)

  • BLIZZARD_API_ACCESS_TOKEN = The access token to use for API requests (optional)

  • BLIZZARD_API_LOCALE - The locale to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_REALM_ID - The realm ID to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_REALM_SLUG - The realm slug to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_CHARACTER_ID - The character ID to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_CHARACTER_NAME - The character name to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_SEASON_ID - The season ID to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_BRACKET - The bracket to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

  • BLIZZARD_API_GUILD_SLUG - The guild slug to use for API requests (defaults is blank)

This means that you can set these variables in your .env file and the library will automatically load them for you. You can also override these variables by passing them directly to the BlizzardApi constructor.

Note

There is an example .env file available in the github repository called .env_example. Use it as a reference. Just remember to rename it to .env and fill in your own values.