Reading a boolean out of the environment is the kind of thing every project reinvents, slightly differently, in slightly buggy ways:

DEBUG = os.environ.get("DEBUG", "").lower() in ("1", "true", "yes")
VERBOSE = os.environ.get("VERBOSE", "").lower() in ("1", "true", "yes")
CACHE = os.environ.get("CACHE", "").lower() in ("1", "true", "yes")

envbool is that snippet, done once and done properly:

from envbool import envbool

DEBUG = envbool("DEBUG")
VERBOSE = envbool("VERBOSE")
CACHE = envbool("CACHE")

Features

• Lenient by default, strict when you want it. Unrecognized values quietly become False, or raise on demand to catch typos in production config.
• Always returns bool. No None, no surprises in your type signatures.
• Customizable value sets. Replace or extend the truthy/falsy words your environment uses.
• Process-level defaults. Call set_defaults() once at startup instead of threading options through every call site.
• A CLI for shell scripts. Exit codes map to truthiness, so it drops straight into && / || chains.
• Zero ceremony. Zero dependencies, fully typed, Python 3.11+.

Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Command-line interface
• API reference
• Advanced topics
• Contributing
• License

Installation

pip install envbool
# or
uv add envbool

Usage

The basics

envbool is lenient by default: anything not recognized as truthy returns False, and unset or empty variables return the default.

from envbool import envbool

DEBUG = envbool("DEBUG")  # False if unset or empty
CACHE = envbool("CACHE", default=True)  # True if unset or empty

The built-in truthy values are true, 1, yes, on; the falsy values are false, 0, no, off. Comparison is case-insensitive and ignores surrounding whitespace.

Strict mode

Pass strict=True to raise InvalidBoolValueError on anything outside the truthy/falsy sets — ideal for failing fast on a misconfigured deployment.

import sys
from envbool import envbool, InvalidBoolValueError

try:
    USE_SSL = envbool("USE_SSL", strict=True)
except InvalidBoolValueError as e:
    sys.exit(f"Bad value for USE_SSL: {e.value!r}")

Custom value sets

When your environment speaks a different dialect, extend the defaults or replace them outright:

# Add to the built-in sets
FEATURE = envbool("FEATURE_FLAG", extend_truthy={"enabled", "y"})

# Replace them entirely
LOCALE = envbool("USE_METRIC", truthy={"metric"}, falsy={"imperial"})

Coercing arbitrary strings

Use to_bool for values that don't come from the environment. It accepts the same keyword arguments as envbool.

from envbool import to_bool

to_bool("yes")  # True
to_bool("0")  # False
to_bool("maybe", strict=True)  # raises InvalidBoolValueError

Process-level defaults

Set policy once at startup instead of threading strict=/extend_truthy= through every call site:

import envbool

envbool.set_defaults(strict=True, extend_truthy=["enabled"])

envbool.envbool("DEBUG")  # now raises on unrecognized values by default

set_defaults() replaces the process-level defaults from the built-ins, not from whatever a previous set_defaults() call left in place — call it once. Call-site arguments (envbool("X", strict=False)) still override whatever set_defaults() configured:

built-in defaults  →  set_defaults()  →  function arguments / CLI flags

get_defaults() returns the active Defaults (a frozen dataclass: strict, warn, effective_truthy, effective_falsy) for inspection. reset_defaults() restores the built-ins — call it in a test fixture (see Testing code that uses envbool).

Through 0.3.x, envbool read TOML config files (envbool.toml, [tool.envbool]). 0.4.0 removed them in favor of set_defaults() — see CHANGELOG.md for the rationale and migration note.

Command-line interface

The envbool command exits 0 for truthy, 1 for falsy, and 2 on error, so it composes naturally with shell control flow.

$ export DEBUG=true
$ envbool DEBUG && echo "debug is on"
debug is on

$ echo "Verbose: $(envbool --print VERBOSE)"
Verbose: false

$ echo "yes" | envbool && echo "truthy"
truthy

$ envbool --strict ENABLE_CACHE || echo "cache is off or misconfigured"
cache is off or misconfigured

Input is taken from a VAR_NAME argument, the --value flag, or a stdin pipe — in that order of priority.

$ envbool --help
usage: envbool [-h] [--value TEXT] [--strict] [--warn] [--default]
               [--required] [--print] [--truthy VALUE] [--falsy VALUE]
               [--extend-truthy VALUE] [--extend-falsy VALUE]
               [VAR_NAME]

Coerce an environment variable or string to a boolean.

positional arguments:
  VAR_NAME              Environment variable name to check.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --value, -v TEXT      Check a literal string instead of an env var.
  --strict, -s          Raise error on unrecognized values.
  --warn                Log a warning on unrecognized values.
  --default, -d         Default value if unset/empty (default: false).
  --required, -r        Exit 2 if VAR_NAME is not set in the environment.
  --print, -p           Print "true" or "false" instead of using exit codes.
  --truthy VALUE        Replace the truthy set with VALUE (repeatable).
  --falsy VALUE         Replace the falsy set with VALUE (repeatable).
  --extend-truthy VALUE
                        Add VALUE to the truthy set (repeatable).
  --extend-falsy VALUE  Add VALUE to the falsy set (repeatable).

A few rules worth knowing:

• Omitting --strict / --warn uses the built-in defaults (lenient, no warnings). set_defaults() is a library-level concern — the one-shot CLI process doesn't read it.
• VAR_NAME and --value are mutually exclusive.
• --required only applies to VAR_NAME; combining it with --value or giving it no VAR_NAME at all is a usage error.
• With no VAR_NAME, --value, or non-empty piped stdin, the CLI prints usage and exits 2.

API reference

envbool() and to_bool() share the same keyword-only options:

envbool() also accepts required (bool, default False): when True, a variable that is unset raises MissingEnvVarError before default is applied. A variable set to an empty string counts as present and still uses default.

Advanced topics

Exception handling

Every exception inherits from EnvBoolError, so a single except EnvBoolError catches the whole library. Catch a specific subclass when you need its detail:

from envbool import envbool, InvalidBoolValueError

try:
    result = envbool("MY_VAR", strict=True)
except InvalidBoolValueError as e:
    print(e.var)  # "MY_VAR" — env var name, or None when raised from to_bool()
    print(e.value)  # "maybe" — the normalized (stripped, lowercased) value
    print(e.truthy)  # frozenset({"true", "1", "yes", "on"}) — effective truthy set
    print(e.falsy)  # frozenset({"false", "0", "no", "off"}) — effective falsy set

InvalidBoolValueError also subclasses the built-in ValueError, so existing except ValueError handlers keep working. Its message spells out exactly what was expected:

InvalidBoolValueError: Invalid boolean value for MY_VAR: 'maybe'
  Expected truthy: 1, on, true, yes
  Expected falsy:  0, false, no, off

Logging

envbool logs through the standard logging module under the "envbool" namespace and attaches no handlers of its own — configure it like any other library logger:

import logging

logging.getLogger("envbool").setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
logging.getLogger("envbool").addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())

The unset-vs-empty distinction

envbool() always returns bool and deliberately cannot tell an unset variable apart from one set to the empty string — both yield default. Most deployment tooling can't distinguish the two either, and a plain bool keeps call sites clean. When you genuinely need the distinction, check os.environ yourself:

import os
from envbool import envbool

if "MY_VAR" not in os.environ:
    ...  # truly unset — handle the "not configured" case
else:
    result = envbool("MY_VAR")

Testing code that uses envbool

If your tests call set_defaults(), reset it between tests with an autouse fixture so overrides don't leak across the suite:

# conftest.py
import pytest
from envbool import reset_defaults


@pytest.fixture(autouse=True)
def _reset_envbool_defaults():
    yield
    reset_defaults()

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, project layout, and the conventions this repo follows.

License

Released under the MIT License.