This is an enhanced version of github.com/joho/godotenv

As a library

go get github.com/agclqq/godotenv

or if you want to use it as a bin command

go get github.com/agclqq/godotenv/cmd/godotenv

Add your application configuration to your .env file in the root of your project:

S3_BUCKET=YOURS3BUCKET
SECRET_KEY=YOURSECRETKEYGOESHERE

Then in your Go app you can do something like

package main

import (
    "github.com/agclqq/godotenv"
    "log"
    "os"
)

func main() {
  err := godotenv.Load()
  if err != nil {
    log.Fatal("Error loading .env file")
  }

  s3Bucket := os.Getenv("S3_BUCKET")
  secretKey := os.Getenv("SECRET_KEY")

  // now do something with s3 or whatever
}

If you're even lazier than that, you can just take advantage of the autoload package which will read in .env on import

import _ "github.com/agclqq/godotenv/autoload"

While .env in the project root is the default, you don't have to be constrained, both examples below are 100% legit

_ = godotenv.Load("somerandomfile")
_ = godotenv.Load("filenumberone.env", "filenumbertwo.env")

If you want to be really fancy with your env file you can do comments and exports (below is a valid env file)

# I am a comment and that is OK
SOME_VAR=someval
FOO=BAR # comments at line end are OK too
export BAR=BAZ

Or finally you can do YAML(ish) style

FOO: bar
BAR: baz

as a final aside, if you don't want godotenv munging your env you can just get a map back instead

var myEnv map[string]string
myEnv, err := godotenv.Read()

s3Bucket := myEnv["S3_BUCKET"]

... or from an io.Reader instead of a local file

reader := getRemoteFile()
myEnv, err := godotenv.Parse(reader)

... or from a string if you so desire

content := getRemoteFileContent()
myEnv, err := godotenv.Unmarshal(content)

if you don't want to receive the return value immediately

myEnv := godotenv.GetEnv()
myEnvs := godotenv.GetEnvs()

Existing envs take precedence of envs that are loaded later.

The convention for managing multiple environments (i.e. development, test, production) is to create an env named {YOURAPP}_ENV and load envs in this order:

env := os.Getenv("FOO_ENV")
if "" == env {
  env = "development"
}

godotenv.Load(".env." + env + ".local")
if "test" != env {
  godotenv.Load(".env.local")
}
godotenv.Load(".env." + env)
godotenv.Load() // The Original .env

If you need to, you can also use godotenv.Overload() to defy this convention and overwrite existing envs instead of only supplanting them. Use with caution.

Assuming you've installed the command as above and you've got $GOPATH/bin in your $PATH

godotenv -f /some/path/to/.env some_command with some args

If you don't specify -f it will fall back on the default of loading .env in PWD

Godotenv can also write a map representing the environment to a correctly-formatted and escaped file

env, err := godotenv.Unmarshal("KEY=value")
err := godotenv.Write(env, "./.env")

... or to a string

env, err := godotenv.Unmarshal("KEY=value")
content, err := godotenv.Marshal(env)