castenv

Overview

Environment variables like MAX_THREADS=5 , ENABLE_DEBUG=false are usually imported into process.env as strings. This leads to subtle bugs when treating them like booleans or numbers e.g. if (process.env['ENABLE_DEBUG'])... because "false" equals true in JS

castenv uses JSON.parse() to convert env variables into native types. castenv.cast() will modify process.env, and castenv.env() will leave process.env unmodified.

Getting Started

Install it via npm:

npm install castenv

Include in your project:

// cast process.env in place
require("castenv").cast()

// alternatively, don't modify process.env
var env = require("castenv").env()

Example Casting

process.env["TEST_NUMBER_VALUE"] = "5"
console.log(typeof process.env["TEST_NUMBER_VALUE"])
// "string"
require("castenv").cast()
console.log(typeof process.env["TEST_NUMBER_VALUE"])
// number

Pitfalls

• hex & octal values like 0x123 and 0123 will return as strings--JSON doesn't support those literals

License

MIT