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JSON Values are improperly stored #285
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Hi @mslinn . Thanks for creating a new issue.
Let's take the example
.envthat you included:MY_JSON="{\"a\": \"b\"}"Now let's parse this file using
dotenvin Python:import os from dotenv import load_dotenv import json import pprint load_dotenv() parsed_json = json.loads(os.getenv("MY_JSON")) pprint.pprint(parsed_json)If you run this Python file, you will see that the output is:
{'a': 'b'}In other words, it parsed the
.envfile correctly, and so we could load the JSON correctly. Double quotes were correctly escaped in a string literal surrounded by double quotes. So I would not agree that JSON values are improperly stored.Now, you may still have a preference for using single quotes instead of double quotes. May I ask, how are you creating the
.envfiles? Are you creating them manually, or are you using the python-dotenv CLI?The motivation for this issue is for
.envfiles to be portable betweendotenvimplementations, and to be usable without any preprocessing. Simply changing to single quotes would accomplish that.That seems like a good goal, to achieve comptability with different
.envparsers. Do you have an example of a parser that would parse the string quoted with single quotes correctly, but would fail with double quotes?Older versions of
python-dotenvcould not handle string literals surrounded with single quotes:$ pip install -U 'python-dotenv==0.6.3' $ cat .env MY_JSON='{"a": "b"}' $ python3 settings.py File "/usr/lib/python3.8/json/decoder.py", line 355, in raw_decode raise JSONDecodeError("Expecting value", s, err.value) from None json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)This is because older versions of
python-dotenvwould treat single quotes as part of the value, instead of just as quotes surrounding the value.Using
source .envin the Bash command-line works for both single quotes and double quotes.If you can't find any examples of parsers that break with double quotes, I think it would be preferable to keep the existing behaviour of python-dotenv, in order to preserve compatibility with older versions of python-dotenv.
I am writing docs and blogging, using Jekyll plugins. I would have to write a special filter just so that JSON contents would display properly when including portions of .env files if I used
python-dotenv.Just to clarify, you are using the CLI (
dotenv set MY_JSON '{...}') to edit the .env file, right? If you are using that, then yes, it won't use single quotes at the moment.If all you want is show portions of .env files, then you should be able to use single quotes.
The dotenv CLI is quite limited at the moment. Supporting both types of quotes might be good since they have different semantics in python-dotenv (e.g. variables are not expanded in single-quoted values).
Yes, bash expansion is also inhibited by single quotes as well.
I'm not very familiar with Jekyll. Does it parse
.envfiles? I had a look at the links that you posted, but I couldn't find an answer to this question. I'm sorry if I'm being obtuse.You could use the environment variables in
.envin Jekyll like this in a shell like Bash:$ set -a $ source .env $ jekyll ....That way, Jekyll would have access to all the settings in
.envas environment variables.sourcein Bash will interpret the double-quoted string literal as intended.Jekyll does not know about .env files. I wrote Jekyll plugins to help me document code. Some of those plugins read and filter data from files. I would like to be able to include portions of .env files in the docs. If the files do not store proper JSON my task becomes much harder.
Unless I missed something you didn't answer my question. Do you really need to use the CLI? Otherwise, just write the single-quoted JSON value in the file and python-dotenv will be able to read it the way you want.
Regardless of that problem, I'll consider switching to single-quotes in the implementation of
dotenv setso that there's no surprise with variable expansion.
python-dotenvdoes not store valid JSON. The JSON standard requires double quotes and will not accept single quotes, nor will the parser.JSON values are escaped to death by
python-dotenvbecause double quotes are used to delimit values. For example, instead of storing JSON values nicely, like this:They are stored as:
... which is not JSON. Yes, it could be transformed into JSON.
python-dotenvreads values surrounded by single quotes without any problem. Is there a technical reason why values are not stored by default surrounded by single quotes?