In python project, can we use .env file locally without docker in vs code?

Yes, you can use a .env file locally in a Python project without Docker in VS Code.

The .env file is a plain text file that contains key-value pairs of environment variables that your Python project needs. You can create a .env file in the root directory of your project and specify the necessary environment variables.

To use the environment variables from the .env file in your Python code, you need to install the python-dotenv library. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install python-dotenv

Once you have installed the python-dotenv library, you can load the environment variables from the .env file in your Python code using the following code:

python
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

# Load environment variables from .env file
load_dotenv()

# Access environment variables
DATABASE_URL = os.getenv("DATABASE_URL")
SECRET_KEY = os.getenv("SECRET_KEY")

Make sure to replace the DATABASE_URL and SECRET_KEY with the names of the environment variables you have defined in your .env file.

Note that the .env file should not be committed to your version control system as it may contain sensitive information such as passwords and API keys. Instead, you can add it to your .gitignore file so that it is ignored by Git