FAQ¶

Can django-environ determine the location of .env file automatically?

django-environ will try to get and read .env file from the project root if you haven’t specified the path for it when you call environ.Env.read_env(). However, this is not the recommended way. When it is possible always specify the path to the .env file. Alternatively, you can use a trick with an environment variable pointing to the actual location of .env file. For details see “Multiple env files”.
What (where) is the root part of the project, is it the directory that contains settings.py file?

Where your manage.py file is (that is your project root directory).
What kind of file should .env be?

.env is a plain text file.
Should name of the file be simply .env (or something.env)?

Just .env. However, this is not a strict rule, but just a common practice. Formally, you can use any filename.
Is .env file going to be imported in settings file?

No need to import, django-environ automatically picks variables from there.
Should I commit my .env file?

Credentials should only be accessible on the machines that need access to them. Never commit sensitive information to a repository that is not needed by every development machine and server.
Why is it not overriding existing environment variables?

By default, django-environ won’t overwrite existing environment variables as it assumes the deployment environment has more knowledge about configuration than the application does. To overwrite existing environment variables you can pass overwrite=True to environ.Env.read_env(). For more see “Overwriting existing environment values from env files”