dotenv-cra
Create React App style dotenv support for
Node projects. Combine a base .env file with a .env.${NODE_ENV} file to
create your optimum configuration.
Note: It's not recommended that you store secrets (like private API keys) in
your .env file(s). Secret configuration values should be managed and provided
as part of your hosting solution.
Install
npm i dotenv-cra
Usage
Not much new here. As with dotenv, import/require dotenv-cra and configure it
as early as possible. This ensures that any modules reading values from
process.env can retrieve the expected values.
⚠️ Warning: The NODE_ENV variable must be set, so you may choose to default it
in your application before calling config().
import { config } from 'dotenv-cra';
process.env.NODE_ENV = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';
config();
Note When using NodeJS v15 or higher you can use Logical Nullish Assignment as well:
process.env.NODE_ENV ??= 'development';
At a minimum, create a base .env file in the root directory of your project
with KEY=value entires on each line. However, if that's all you ever do, you
don't need this library 😉. To see the real value of dotenv-cra, try creating a
second .env.development file with some new and some overlapping KEY=value
pairs.
# .env
LOG_LEVEL=info
PORT=3001
# .env.development
LOG_LEVEL=debug
# Loaded into process.env
LOG_LEVEL=debug
PORT=3001
What .env files can be used?
.env: Default..env.local: Local overrides. This file is loaded for all environments except test..env.development, .env.test, .env.production: Environment-specific settings..env.development.local, .env.test.local, .env.production.local: Local overrides of environment-specific settings.
Files on the left have more priority than files on the right:
npm start: .env.development.local, .env.local, .env.development, .envnpm test: .env.test.local, .env.test, .env (note .env.local is missing)
CRA Reference
Options
Env
Default: process.env.NODE_ENV
You may specify a custom environment if you don't want to base the .env.*
files you load on NODE_ENV. For example, you may want NODE_ENV set to
production, but you want to load the .env.staging file.
dotenvCra.config({ env: process.env.AWS_ENV });
Prefix
Default: none
You may specify a required prefix for your dotenv variables. For example, you
may want to prefix your variables with WEB_API_ to ensure there aren't any
collisions with other environment variables.
dotenvCra.config({ prefix: 'WEB_API_' });
Path
Default: path.resolve(process.cwd(), '.env')
You may specify a custom path if your file containing environment variables is
located elsewhere. This will also be used as the basis for resolving the other
.env.* files.
dotenvCra.config({ path: '/full/custom/path/to/your/.env' });
Encoding
Default: utf8
You may specify the encoding of your file containing environment variables.
Passed through to dotenv.
dotenvCra.config({ encoding: 'latin1' });
Debug
Default: false
You may turn on logging to help debug why certain keys or values are not being
set as you expect. Passed through to dotenv.
dotenvCra.config({ debug: process.env.DEBUG });
Credits
Thanks to these projects for this simple yet powerful approach 👏
