Custom-Env

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.

Installation

npm install custom-env

Usage

Place this at the top of your application

ESM Import

import { env } from "custom-env";
env();

CommonJS Require

require("custom-env").env();

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.

Example

console.log(process.env.APP_ENV);
console.log(process.env.DB_HOST);
console.log(process.env.DB_USER);
console.log(process.env.DB_PASS);

Expected Output

dev
localhost
root
root

If you want to load from a particular environment, use:

ESM Import

// This loads configuration from staging environment
import { env } from "custom-env";
env("staging");

CommonJS Require

// 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. This completely overrides process.env.NODE_ENV Try it out:

NODE_ENV=staging node index.js

Example

console.log(process.env.APP_ENV);
console.log(process.env.DB_HOST);
console.log(process.env.DB_USER);
console.log(process.env.DB_PASS);

Expected Output

staging
localhost
root
root

Loading from the current environment

You can load configuration from the current environment with custom-env by passing the first argument of the env() method as true (note: not required in version 2+) and that's all:

ESM Import

// This Loads the configuration dynamically from to the current enviroment
// Defaults to _dev_ if the environment was set
import { env } from "custom-env";
env("custom-env").env(true);

CommonJS Require

// 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

The env() method holds three (3) optional arguments.

• 1 envname - Specifies the development name, defaults to dev or development,
• 2 path - Specifies the directory to find configuration files, defaults to current working directory.
• 3 defaultEnvFallback - Specifies whether to fallback to .env configuration if the specified envname is not found, defaults to true.

ESM Import

import { env } from "custom-env";
env("dev", "path/to/custom/path");

CommonJS Require

require("custom-env").env("dev", "path/to/custom/path");

TypeScript Usage

The library comes with a type declaration file If you want auto complete for your .env variables

Use dotenv-types-generator it will generate a .env.d.ts file containing all your variables

Usage:

npx dotenv-types-generator

dotenv-expand

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.

What about .env.production?

We strongly recommend that you should not commit and pass .env.production file in production mode, as this file may contain sensitive information.

Change Log

2.0.2 - 2023-04-24

Changed

• Custom env now supports TypeScript, see this for more info.
• You can now load configuration from the current environment by default without passing any argument to env() method

2.0 - 2020-02-21

Fixed

• Bug #11 Inconsistency in envname loading fixed.
• Bug #9 Default env config fall back fixed.

Changed

• You can now load configuration from the current environment by default without passing any argument to env() method

Github Repo

https://github.com/erisanolasheni/custom-env