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importing a file within visual studio code

I'm trying to make a file within visual studio code that holds my API key and secret key. so when I do future codes I can just import that file into my code without having to write my API keys every time.
I've tried this
api key = 'cewhjhbdhbd'
secret key = 'jhewbduywevb'
tried to save it.. it saved in documents and when I tried to import it nothing happened.. where am I going wrong?
I am a beginner at coding so sorry if this is obvious.

You can use environment variables for this.
import os
# Set environment variables
os.environ['API_USER'] = 'username'
os.environ['API_PASSWORD'] = 'secret'
# Get environment variables
USER = os.getenv('API_USER')
PASSWORD = os.environ.get('API_PASSWORD')
You can then import this file or use the above block of code in your files.

Use an environment file like .env to store your API keys. In a format like
ENVIRONMENT='DEVELOPMENT'
API_KEY='yourapikeygoeshere'
DEBUG=True
DB_NAME=''
DB_USER=''
DB_PASSWORD=''
DB_HOST='localhost'
DB_PORT='5432'
Then you can use packages like dotenv to access them.
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from pathlib import Path
dotenv_path = Path('path/to/.env')
load_dotenv(dotenv_path=dotenv_path)
API_KEY = os.getenv('API_KEY')

Name error when trying to import API key from .env

I am trying to store my API Keys in a .env file
I created the file as a File containing settings for editor file type. Stored my APIKeys
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=***
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN=***
TWIML_APPLICATION_SID=***
TWILIO_API_KEY=***
TWILIO_API_SECRET=***
Installed decouple, imported and used config to retrieve my API tokens in my settings.py file
from decouple import config
...
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = config(TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID)
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN = config(TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN)
TWIML_APPLICATION_SID = config(TWIML_APPLICATION_SID)
TWILIO_API_KEY = config(TWILIO_API_KEY)
TWILIO_API_SECRET = config(TWILIO_API_SECRET)
I am however getting the error message:
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = config(TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID)
NameError: name 'TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID' is not defined

You don't need to use the decouple library to read your environment variables.
Firstly download the .env plug-in supporter for PyCharm (if that's what you're using)
https://www.codestudyblog.com/cs2112pyc/1224021812.html
This will allow you to set and get variables from your file. Make sure your configuration has the correct .env file set.
my .env file has the variable set to:
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID=SUPER SECRET KEY
Then all you need to is:
import os
twilio_key = os.environ.get('TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID')
print(twilio_key)
>>>SUPER SECRET KEY
Process finished with exit code 0

How to Mask Twilio/Python Variable

I have a Python project where I am using a Twilio number (201-282-1111), but I do not want this private number to be in my public Git repository. I could make a new repo and just not include the values, but I would like it be easy enough for non techie people to use my script.
My question is, what can I do to mask the fake number provided below? Also, I have Twilio account_sid and auth_token that I would like to mask as well.
client.sms.messages.create(
body = "Your song was not found",
to = phoneNum,
from_ = "+2012821111")
account_sid = "XX1a116061fe67df9ab9eb0bc3c7ed0111"
auth_token = "1x11bc1b6555c52a93762f46d45861xx"
client = TwilioRestClient(account_sid,auth_token)

Use a config file. On one of my projects, this is what I did:
Install ConfigParser.
Create a file named config (or another name, your choice) that looks like this:
[Config]
account_sid=<your sid>
auth_token=<token>
phone_number=<your number>
Edit your .gitignore file and add config to it, this will keep Git from committing your config file to the repository
[optional] Add a config.sample file, which is a copy of the config file but with your values set to defaults or dummy values. Commit this one to Git. This helps other people set up your app later - all they have to do is copy the file to config and put in their credentials.
To access the config values, use this code:
config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
config.read('config')
try:
your_value = config.get("Config", "your_value")
print your_value
except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
print "'your_value' isn't defined in the config file!"
Another option would be to use an environment variable or to simply ask the user for their credentials when your app starts.

How to use pyfig module in python?

This is the part of the mailer.py script:
config = pyfig.Pyfig(config_file)
svnlook = config.general.svnlook #svnlook path
sendmail = config.general.sendmail #sendmail path
From = config.general.from_email #from email address
To = config.general.to_email #to email address
what does this config variable contain? Is there a way to get the value for config variable without pyfig?

In this case config = a pyfig.Pyfig object initialised with the contents of the file named by the content of the string config_file.
To find out what that object does and contains you can either look at the documentation and/or the source code, both here, or you can print out, after the initialisation, e.g.:
config = pyfig.Pyfig(config_file)
print "Config Contains:\n\t", '\n\t'.join(dir(config))
if hasattr(config, "keys"):
print "Config Keys:\n\t", '\n\t'.join(config.keys())
or if you are using Python 3,
config = pyfig.Pyfig(config_file)
print("Config Contains:\n\t", '\n\t'.join(dir(config)))
if hasattr(config, "keys"):
print("Config Keys:\n\t", '\n\t'.join(config.keys()))
To get the same data without pyfig you would need to read and parse at the content of the file referenced by config_file within your own code.
N.B.: Note that pyfig seems to be more or less abandoned - no updates in over 5 years, web site no longer exists, etc., so I would strongly recommend converting the code to use a json configuration file instead.

Cannot use environment variables for settings in Django

In trying to find a place to store and save settings beyond settings.py and the database, I used an environment.json for environment variables. I import these in settings.py.
My problem is that when I try to change or store new values in my environment, env, settings.py does not notice the change - perhaps because the time and number of times settings.py is read by Django.
Is there a way I would be able to use my environment variables the way I want like attempted below?
# settings.py
import json
with open('/home/dotcloud/environment.json') as f:
env = json.load(f)
EMAIL_HOST = env.get('EMAIL_PORT', '500')
# views.py
import json
def site_configuration(request):
with open('/home/dotcloud/environment.json') as f:
env = json.load(f)
if request.method == 'POST':
os.environ['EMAIL_PORT'] = request.POST['email_port']
return render(request, ...)
# python manage.py shell demo
>>> import json
>>> with open('/home/dotcloud/environment.json') as f:
... env = json.load(f)
...
>>> project_settings.EMAIL_PORT
'500'
>>> env['EMAIL_PORT']
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 'EMAIL_PORT'
>>> env['EMAIL_PORT'] = "123"
>>> env['EMAIL_PORT']
'123'
>>> project_settings.EMAIL_PORT
'500'
>>> project_settings.EMAIL_PORT == env['EMAIL_PORT']
False'
And if not, how else could I store changeable settings that are retrieved by settings.py somewhere in my Django project?

You might want to look into foreman (GitHub) or honcho (GitHub). Both of these look for a .env file in your current directory from which to load local environment variables.
My .env looks like this for most projects (I use dj-database-url for database configuration):
DATABASE_URL=sqlite://localhost/local.db
SECRET_KEY=<a secret key>
DEBUG=True
In your settings.py file, you can load these settings from os.environ like this:
import os
DEBUG = os.environ.get('DEBUG', False)
If there are required settings, you can assert their presence before trying to set them:
assert 'SECRET_KEY' in os.environ, 'Set SECRET_KEY in your .env file!'
SECRET_KEY = os.environ['SECRET_KEY']
I've been using this method of handling local settings for the last few projects I've started and I think it works really well. One caveat is to never commit your .env to source control. These are local settings that exist only for the current configuration and should be recreated for a different environment.

I see the question changed slightly, the original answers are still below but this one has a slightly different answer:
First, make sure you are using the right settings.py (print 'This file is being loaded' should do the trick).
Second, personally I would advise against using json files for config since it is less dynamic than Python files, but it should work regardless.
My recommended way of doing something like this:
create a base_settings.py file with your standard settings
create a settings.py which will be your default settings import. This file should have a from base_settings import * at the top to inherit the base settings.
If you want to have a custom settings file, dotcloud_settings.py for example, simply add the from dotcloud_settings import settings (or base_settings) and set the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to dotcloud_settings or your_project.dotcloud_settings depending on your setup.
Do note that you should be very careful with importing Django modules from these settings files. If any module does a from django.conf import settings it will stop parsing your settings after that point.
As for using json files, roughly the same principle of course:
Once again, make sure you don't have anything that imports django.conf.settings here
Make all of the variables within your json file global to your settings file:
import json
with open('/home/dotcloud/environment.json') as f:
env = json.load(f)
# A little hack to make all variables within our env global
globals().update(env)
Regardless though, I'd recommend turning this around and letting the settings file import this module instead.
Also, Django doesn't listen to environment variables by default (besides the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE so that might be the problem too.