load-dotenv

Load Dot ENV

Automatically find the closest .env file in any parent directory of the cwd, and then load those environment variables into process.env.

Why?

By default the dotenv package only looks in the current working directory of the Node.js process for a .env file. And if you use the path option, that path must be identical both when running locally and when running in production.

Monorepos are a common example when it may be convenient to have a .env file that is not in your cwd. load-dotenv allows you to have a single .env file used by every package, regardless of file structure.

load-dotenv provides a simple interface to load your environment variables, only requiring you to add a single import statement. That avoids the hassle of wanting to load your environment vars before any other code runs, but also having to place all the imports at the top of your file before any other code.

Install

Make sure you also install dotenv, which is a peer dependency of this package.

npm i dotenv load-dotenv     # With npm
pnpm i dotenv load-dotenv    # With pnpm
yarn add dotenv load-dotenv  # With yarn

Find and load the closest .env file

As early as possible in your application, import load-dotenv/load:

import 'load-dotenv/load'

Or in Common JS:

require('load-dotenv/load')

This will by default throw an error if it can't find a .env file in any parent directory. To not throw an error, import load-dotenv/load/optional instead.

Or load it yourself

import {findEnv} from 'load-dotenv'
import * as dotenv from 'dotenv'

const envFilePath = findEnv()
dotenv.config({path: envFilePath})

Or in Common JS:

const {findEnv} = require('load-dotenv')
const dotEnv = require('dotenv')

const envFilePath = findEnv()
dotEnv.config({path: envFilePath})

Or with a custom name:

const envFilePath = findEnv('.env.local')
dotenv.config({path: envFilePath})