dotenv.md

In order to use different parameters in our app depending on the enviroment such as...

• Server ports
• Database credentials
• API keys

...we can declare environment variables.

We do this by having a .env file to store the variables.

NEVER COMMIT THIS FILE. PUT IT IN .gitignore!

DBNAME=database
DBUSER=root
DBPASSWORD=root

Which we can read with the dotenv package like so.

// config.js
const dotenv = require("dotenv").config({
    path: `${__dirname}/.env`,
});

const database = process.env.DBNAME;
const user = process.env.DBUSER;
const password = process.env.DBPASSWORD;

module.exports = {
    db: {
        server: "localhost",
        database: database,
        user: user,
        password: password,
    },
};

NOTE: __dirname is required because the variables are undefined when accessing the .env file outside the root folder.

We can then have one .env file for development in the local machine, and one for production on the live server. This way we can just set the variables and not touch the code.

NEVER COMMIT THIS FILE. PUT IT IN .gitignore!

We can also pass in the variables without a .env file and run the script.

DBNAME=database DBUSER=root DBPASSWORD=root node server.js