Issue with Environment Variables on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

[DonGuillotine]

When deploying a Django application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, I encountered a problem with python-decouple. It seems unable to fetch environment variables set in the Elastic Beanstalk environment, even though they are available on the instance.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set up a Django project using python-decouple to fetch environment variables.
2. Deploy to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
3. Ensure environment variables are set in the Elastic Beanstalk configuration.
4. Access the Django application.

Expected Result:

• python-decouple should fetch the environment variables correctly.

Actual Result:

• python-decouple throws an UndefinedValueError indicating that it can't find the environment variable.

Workaround:

Switching to os.environ.get() works, indicating the issue is with python-decouple and not the environment setup.

Environment:

• Python version: 3.11
• python-decouple version: 3.8
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk Platform Version: Python 3.11 running on 64bit Amazon Linux 2023/4.0.3

[hazemAzzam]

check this pull request
https://github.com/HBNetwork/python-decouple/pull/165

I have encountred the same issue, and I found that it retrieves the values from the os.environ first before checking the repository file so that when you update your variables it does not updated in the os.environ
so I changed the if statement to check the repository file first

[DonGuillotine]

check this pull request https://github.com/HBNetwork/python-decouple/pull/165

I have encountred the same issue, and I found that it retrieves the values from the os.environ first before checking the repository file so that when you update your variables it does not updated in the os.environ so I changed the if statement to check the repository file first

Thanks @hazemAzzam, I hope it gets merged.

[almdudler777]

Does this problem still exist? The Problem of @hazemAzzam was with .env files.

As i understand this Issue; you're not using .env files??
Sorry if that question is obsolete - i'm not familliar with AWS Beanstalk.

The UndefinedValueError is only raised in one spot - after decouple checks the os.environ and then its internal repository (either .env or .ini file). If neither does contain the key you're looking for the error is raised.

It checks the os.environ by using its __contains__ method - ie. by doing if key in os.environ: return os.environ[key].

When you say you worked around this by using os.environ.get(key); which should only differ from os.environ[key] by not raising KeyError if key does not exist.

When you switched to os.environ.get(...) are you by any chance supplying a default (2nd param) aswell?

[henriquebastos]

The PR was closed, so I am closing this issue too since we can't reproduce it.

[DonGuillotine]

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, I found out that I activated the wrong virtual Environment.

Once I activated the correct one python-decouple was able to fetch environment variables set in the Elastic Beanstalk environment correctly.