Use dotenv In A Non-Rails Project

Up to now I've only used dotenv in a Rails context. It can just as easily be used in a plain old Ruby project.

Install the non-Rails version of the gem.

$ gem install dotenv

Then add the following lines wherever you want dotenv included and loaded. In my case, I want it pulled in as part of my RSpec setup in spec_helper.rb.

require 'dotenv'
Dotenv.load

Your environment variables declared in .env are now accessible via fetches against the ENV object.

ENV.fetch('my_env_var')