How to use .env files with your rust project

It is very important that secrets are stored in environment variables during the runtime.

During the development, it makes sense to use .env file. In my last project, there were probably 40+ variables in the .env. Although that project was in RoR the idea of .env itself is not new.

But for me, using .env with rust is new.

For my current (self) assignment, I needed to store an API Key. Hence, the use of .env file.

Luckily, there is a crate for that 😉 - called dotenv

To use it in your project :

1. cargo add dotenv
2. At earliest place in your code, add dotenv().ok();