I happy to announce a simple yet very useful tool to lint your .env
files.
wemake-services / dotenv-linter
βΊοΈ Linting dotenv files like a charm!
dotenv-linter
Simple linter for .env
files.
While .env
files are very simple it is required to keep them consistent
This tool offers a wide range of consistency rules and best practices.
And it integrates perfectly to any existing workflow.
Read the announcing post.
Installation and usage
pip install dotenv-linter
And then run it:
dotenv-linter .env .env.template
See Usage section for more information.
Examples
There are many things that can go wrong in your .env
files:
# Next line has leading space which will be removed:
SPACED=
# Equal signs should not be spaced:
KEY = VALUE
# Quotes won't be preserved after parsing, do not use them:
SECRET="my value"
# Beware of duplicate keys!
SECRET=Already defined ;(
# Respect the convention, use `UPPER_CASE`:
kebab-case-name=1
snake_case_name=2
And much more! You can find the full list of violations in our docs.
Background
As a part of our "not blaming but fixing" corporate culture we build a lot of tools that prevent us from making the same mistakes over and over again.
dotenv-linter
is one of these tools.
Some time ago we had several problems with .env
files:
- Some developers used
CONSTANT_CASE
for variable names and some developers usedsnake_case
for that. While this is not a technical issue, but it is not very practical to mix these two cases and then think: what case I have used for this particular variable? Consistency is important! - We also had a problem with quotes and extra spaces. Some developers used
KEY=VALUE
and some usedKEY = "VALUE"
while in fact, these two examples will resolve in exactly the same thing - we prefer to have one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. So, we now stick toKEY=VALUE
notation - We also once had a duplicate key that ruined my day. I have spent several hours debugging my app because of this simple issue. That was a turning point for me and I have decided: let's automate it!
Installation
You can install it via pip
(or any other similar tool):
$ pip install dotenv-linter
Why pip
? Because python
is present almost on all Linux setups. And we try to make this tool as portable as possible.
Usage
Usage is really simple:
$ dotenv-linter path/to/your/.env even/multiple/files/are/fine/.env
Real-life examples
If you are interested in how we use it real life applications you can have a look at (and even try!) our django
template. Here's the line that invokes it.
We also have a full list of linting rules in our docs, check it out.
Conclusion
I hope this simple tool will save you some time, make your project more consistent, and your life slightly better. Add me on github to stay informed about the tools I am building!
Top comments (5)
Cool! Have you thought about making a VS Code extension π?
Nope, but I have now! Do you want to help?
I will give it a try next week! Technically speaking, if it's possible to install the repo as dependency of the extension (or it could be a requirement) and execute the linter as a python shell call, it should be able to tell the user if the file has some errors and the line numbers? As I did a quick read of the source code it reports the filename and line number.
Yes, it sounds like it would work.
Pretty much the same as with
vscode
. It is on the roadmap. Contributions are especially welcome.Feel free to start a project. You will have all my support :)