Security News
ESLint is Now Language-Agnostic: Linting JSON, Markdown, and Beyond
ESLint has added JSON and Markdown linting support with new officially-supported plugins, expanding its versatility beyond JavaScript.
dotenv-that-plays-nice
Advanced tools
Loads environment variables from .env file, while playing nicely with other dotenv implementations in other languages.
dotenv-that-plays-nice
is a zero-dependency module that loads environment variables from a .env
file into process.env
. Storing configuration in the environment separate from code is based on The Twelve-Factor App methodology.
This module is based on the original dotenv
module. Since that module was written, however, the rest of the world has adopted similar and done it one better. Most dotenv
implementations understand that environment variables are largely the province of shell scripts and things that shell scripts call, and so they ignore shell-style comments (# foo
) and correctly handle variable assignations prepended with export
. The dotenv
folks seem oddly resistant to this, claiming that .env
is an "INI file". And given that they delete-on-sight polite "please reconsider so you aren't surprising and wasting folks' time", I guess it's probably best forked. So, here we go: dotenv-that-plays-nice
.
(I don't really have any illusions that this is going to take over the world, but I want it for me.)
# with npm
npm install dotenv-that-plays-nice
# or with Yarn
yarn add dotenv-that-plays-nice
As early as possible in your application, require and configure dotenv.
require('dotenv-that-plays-nice').config()
Create a .env
file in the root directory of your project. Add
environment-specific variables on new lines in the form of NAME=VALUE
.
For example:
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=s1mpl3
process.env
now has the keys and values you defined in your .env
file.
const db = require('db')
db.connect({
host: process.env.DB_HOST,
username: process.env.DB_USER,
password: process.env.DB_PASS
})
You can use the --require
(-r
) command line option to preload dotenv. By doing this, you do not need to require and load dotenv in your application code. This is the preferred approach when using import
instead of require
.
$ node -r dotenv-that-plays-nice/config your_script.js
The configuration options below are supported as command line arguments in the format dotenv_config_<option>=value
$ node -r dotenv-that-plays-nice/config your_script.js dotenv_config_path=/custom/path/to/your/env/vars
Additionally, you can use environment variables to set configuration options. Command line arguments will precede these.
$ DOTENV_CONFIG_<OPTION>=value node -r dotenv-that-plays-nice/config your_script.js
$ DOTENV_CONFIG_ENCODING=latin1 node -r dotenv-that-plays-nice/config your_script.js dotenv_config_path=/custom/path/to/.env
config
will read your .env
file, parse the contents, assign it to
process.env
,
and return an Object with a parsed
key containing the loaded content or an error
key if it failed.
const result = dotenv.config()
if (result.error) {
throw result.error
}
console.log(result.parsed)
You can additionally, pass options to config
.
Default: path.resolve(process.cwd(), '.env')
You may specify a custom path if your file containing environment variables is located elsewhere.
require('dotenv-that-plays-nice').config({ path: '/full/custom/path/to/your/env/vars' })
Default: utf8
You may specify the encoding of your file containing environment variables.
require('dotenv-that-plays-nice').config({ encoding: 'latin1' })
Default: false
You may turn on logging to help debug why certain keys or values are not being set as you expect.
require('dotenv-that-plays-nice').config({ debug: process.env.DEBUG })
The engine which parses the contents of your file containing environment variables is available to use. It accepts a String or Buffer and will return an Object with the parsed keys and values.
const dotenv = require('dotenv-that-plays-nice')
const buf = Buffer.from('BASIC=basic')
const config = dotenv.parse(buf) // will return an object
console.log(typeof config, config) // object { BASIC : 'basic' }
Default: false
You may turn on logging to help debug why certain keys or values are not being set as you expect.
const dotenv = require('dotenv-that-plays-nice')
const buf = Buffer.from('hello world')
const opt = { debug: true }
const config = dotenv.parse(buf, opt)
// expect a debug message because the buffer is not in KEY=VAL form
The parsing engine currently supports the following rules:
BASIC=basic
becomes {BASIC: 'basic'}
EMPTY=
becomes {EMPTY: ''}
)JSON={"foo": "bar"}
becomes {JSON:"{\"foo\": \"bar\"}"
)trim
) (FOO= some value
becomes {FOO: 'some value'}
)SINGLE_QUOTE='quoted'
becomes {SINGLE_QUOTE: "quoted"}
)FOO=" some value "
becomes {FOO: ' some value '}
)MULTILINE="new\nline"
becomes{MULTILINE: 'new
line'}
dotenv-that-plays-nice
): lines beginning with #
are treated as comments instead of turning into debug barfdotenv-that-plays-nice
): lines beginning with export
are parsed as if the export
wasn't there.env
file?No. We strongly recommend against committing your .env
file to version
control. It should only include environment-specific values such as database
passwords or API keys. Your production database should have a different
password than your development database.
.env
files?No. We strongly recommend against having a "main" .env
file and an "environment" .env
file like .env.test
. Your config should vary between deploys, and you should not be sharing values between environments.
In a twelve-factor app, env vars are granular controls, each fully orthogonal to other env vars. They are never grouped together as “environments”, but instead are independently managed for each deploy. This is a model that scales up smoothly as the app naturally expands into more deploys over its lifetime.
We will never modify any environment variables that have already been set. In particular, if there is a variable in your .env
file which collides with one that already exists in your environment, then that variable will be skipped. This behavior allows you to override all .env
configurations with a machine-specific environment, although it is not recommended.
If you want to override process.env
you can do something like this:
const fs = require('fs')
const dotenv = require('dotenv-that-plays-nice')
const envConfig = dotenv.parse(fs.readFileSync('.env.override'))
for (let k in envConfig) {
process.env[k] = envConfig[k]
}
For dotenv@2.x.x
: Yes. dotenv.config()
now returns an object representing
the parsed .env
file. This gives you everything you need to continue
setting values on process.env
. For example:
const dotenv = require('dotenv-that-plays-nice')
const variableExpansion = require('dotenv-expand')
const myEnv = dotenv.config()
variableExpansion(myEnv)
import
?ES2015 and beyond offers modules that allow you to export
any top-level function
, class
, var
, let
, or const
.
When you run a module containing an
import
declaration, the modules it imports are loaded first, then each module body is executed in a depth-first traversal of the dependency graph, avoiding cycles by skipping anything already executed.
You must run dotenv.config()
before referencing any environment variables. Here's an example of problematic code:
errorReporter.js
:
import { Client } from 'best-error-reporting-service'
export const client = new Client(process.env.BEST_API_KEY)
index.js
:
import dotenv from 'dotenv-that-plays-nice'
import errorReporter from './errorReporter'
dotenv.config()
errorReporter.client.report(new Error('faq example'))
client
will not be configured correctly because it was constructed before dotenv.config()
was executed. There are (at least) 3 ways to make this work.
node --require dotenv-that-plays-nice/config index.js
(Note: you do not need to import
dotenv with this approach)dotenv-that-plays-nice/config
instead of dotenv-that-plays-nice
(Note: you do not need to call dotenv.config()
and must pass options via the command line or environment variables with this approach)config
first as outlined in this comment on the parent project's #133See CONTRIBUTING.md
See CHANGELOG.md
export
prepending to entries in .env
.v8.1.0
; packaging snafu.)FAQs
Loads environment variables from .env file, while playing nicely with other dotenv implementations in other languages.
The npm package dotenv-that-plays-nice receives a total of 0 weekly downloads. As such, dotenv-that-plays-nice popularity was classified as not popular.
We found that dotenv-that-plays-nice demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
ESLint has added JSON and Markdown linting support with new officially-supported plugins, expanding its versatility beyond JavaScript.
Security News
Members Hub is conducting large-scale campaigns to artificially boost Discord server metrics, undermining community trust and platform integrity.
Security News
NIST has failed to meet its self-imposed deadline of clearing the NVD's backlog by the end of the fiscal year. Meanwhile, CVE's awaiting analysis have increased by 33% since June.