/getconfig

Config file reader for node.js projects that detects environment based on NODE_ENV.

Primary LanguageJavaScript

#getconfig - config fetcher for node.js

Managing configs for different environments is kind of a pain.

In short I wanted it to:

  • Be simple to understand and use
  • Use NODE_ENV environment variable to grab appropriate config
  • Let me just go var config = require('getconfig') from anywhere in the app and have it Just Work™
  • Allow using different formats (via require hooks)

How to use

  1. npm install getconfig
  2. Create a config/default.json file in the same folder as the main entry point (usually project root)
  3. Just require getconfig like so from anywhere in your project:
var config = require('getconfig');
  1. That's it!

Where to put your config and what to call it

Getconfig looks for a config directory in the same folder as the main entry point of your app. Your configuration files should be contained within that directory.

The configuration files attempted by require, in order, are:

  • config/default
  • config/{{NODE_ENV}}
  • config/local

Note that we don't list extensions, that's because the files are loaded via node's require mechanism, so anything node can require will work.

In the event that NODE_ENV is not set, getconfig will attempt to load dev, devel, develop, and development in its place.

Environment variables

In a lot of situations it's simpler to pass configuration via environment variables, rather than hardcoding it into a config file.

Fortunately, getconfig can fill those in for you. Just set the value of a key to a string like '$NODE_ENV' for example and the environment variable will be expanded inline.

Note that this will only work for environment variables whose names are within the character set of A-Z, 0-9, and _ (underscore). This is to prevent collisions with things like complex strings that may start with a $.

Explicitly setting the config location

In certain circumstances, when your app isn't run directly (e.g. test runners) getconfig may not be able to lookup your config file properly. In this case, you can set a GETCONFIG_ROOT environment variable to the directory where your config files are located.

getconfig will always fill in the getconfig.env value in your resulting config object with the current environment name so you can programatically determine the environment if you'd like. If no NODE_ENV is set it will also set getconfig.isDev to true.

Changelog

  • 2.0.0
    • Total refactor, now stores config files in a directory and merges them on top of each other for simplicity.
  • 1.0.0
    • Bumping major to get out of 0.x.x range per semver conventions.
    • dev enviroments now look for related config files. So if you've set your $NODE_ENV to development and it will still find a file called dev_config.json.
  • 0.3.0 - Switching from JSON.parse to ALCE to allow single quotes and comments. Better readme.

License

MIT

if you dig it follow @HenrikJoreteg and/or @quitlahok on twitter.