Custom env is a library built to make development more feasible by allowing multiple .env configurations for different environments. This is done by loading environment variables from a .env.envname file, into the node's process.env object.
npm install custom-env
Place this at the top of your application
require('custom-env').env()
This by default loads configuration from the .env file and assumes the app is in development enviroment mode.
Create a .env file in your app's root directory and add the environment variables each on new line:
APP_ENV=dev
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=root
Simple! The process.env is now loaded with the environment variables above.
console.log(process.env.APP_ENV)
console.log(process.env.DB_HOST)
console.log(process.env.DB_USER)
console.log(process.env.DB_PASS)
dev
localhost
root
root
If you want to load from a particular environment, use:
// This loads configuration from staging environment
require('custom-env').env('staging')
Create a .env.staging file in your app's root directory and add the environment variables each on new line:
APP_ENV=staging
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=root
The process.env is now loaded with the environment variables above.
Try it out:
NODE_ENV=staging node index.js
console.log(process.env.APP_ENV)
console.log(process.env.DB_HOST)
console.log(process.env.DB_USER)
console.log(process.env.DB_PASS)
staging
localhost
root
root
You can load configuration from the current environment with custom-env, just pass first argument of the env() method as true (note: this must be a type Boolean type true) and that's all:
// This Loads the configuration dynamically from to the current enviroment
// Defaults to _dev_ if the environment was set
require('custom-env').env(true)
The env() method holds two (2) optional arguments envname, path which defaults to dev and current working directory respectively. If you wish to set a different path rather than the current working directory, pass your path as the second argument of the env() method.
require('custom-env').env('dev', 'path/to/custom/path')
Wow! If you are already familiar with the popular dotenv library and you still want to set the custom config, you are good to go as custom-env also provides a public method that directly loads the dotenv's config method. Try it out:
// Load custom-env and set configurations from dotenv
var custom_environments = require('custom-env')
// Set the environment to load
custom_environments.env(process.env.NODE_ENV)
// Set dotenv's config
custom_environments.dotenvConfig({'path':process.cwd(), 'encoding':'utf8'})
You can also leverage the dotenv-expand extension to use ENV variable expansion inside your .env files.
For example:
IP=127.0.0.1
PORT=1234
APP_URL=http://${IP}:${PORT}
Using the above example .env file, process.env.APP_URL would be http://127.0.0.1:1234.
Every public method of custom-env returns itself, making it possible to chain methods. Example:
// Chain the methods
require('custom-env').env('dev').dotenvConfig({'encoding':'utf8'})
We strongly recommend that you should not commit and pass .env.production file in production mode, as this file may contain sensitive information.