I have a dotenv variable saved into .env file (in json format). Example: my_env_variable = '{"ip": "xx.xx.xxx.xxx", "user": "my\user", "password": "password"}' Reading this variable form my .py script (connection is a enum type DBConnection) from os import environ as env from dotenv import load_dotenv load_dotenv() class DatabaseUtils: @staticmethod def get_data_from_db(connectionBConnection , script_path, query): selected_connection = json.loads(env[connection.value].replace('\n', '')) user = selected_connection["user"] Unfortunately, I got an error message, due to backslash in user (coming from json) and gives error: self = <json.decoder.JSONDecoder object at 0x000001295223F0D0> s = '{"instance_ip": "xx.xx.xxx.xxx", "user": "my\user", "password": "password"' idx = 0 json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid \escape: line 1 column 70 (char 69) What is the best solution to escape the backslash? Unfortunately, I cannot omit like r'value' because the parameter is in the .env file and cannot add "r" before the json Edit: I also try with json.dumps before json.loads, but in this case I cannot selected_connection["user"] anymore, because selection_connection became a str Continue reading...