Runtime Error: API_KEY not set

Question

In Pset8, I continue to get the "API_KEY" not set runtime error, even though i crosschecked with:

echo $API_KEY

and the response was:

AIzaSyDKcW1m49qo95kiJFTpGWTUrj3Iyi-xloA

which matched the key that i exported. Read the answer below to understand how to fix this ANNOYING bug.

Answer 1

This can be easily solved by noting which terminal the export command was executed in the same terminal window that flask is running in (will be prompted to run in after the export command). Otherwise, flask cannot recognize the API_KEY as an environment variable, hardly being an environment variable.

Answer 2

If anyone is still having a problem to set API_KEY as an environmental variable, remember to do it following this syntax (in VSCODE terminal or powershell for WINDOWS):

$env:API_KEY="YOUR-API-KEY-HERE"

Then flask run

Also, remember to do this in the same directory in which the app is located, and to also previously set 'application' (as long as it still is the name of your main .py file) as the environment in which the Flask app runs, as per the following syntax: $env:FLASK_APP = "application"

Answer 3

For those that didn't understand the answer of @Karthik Krishnan you can follow this:

export API_KEY=...

Where ... is the api key you got from IEX Cloud

after this in the same terminal window do:

flask run