node-env-configuration

Description

node-env-configuration is a node.js module that helps with loading configuration as suggested by twelve factor methodology www.12factor.net:

The twelve-factor app stores config in environment variables (often shortened to env vars or env). Env vars are easy to change between deploys without changing any code; unlike config files, there is little chance of them being checked into the code repo accidentally; and unlike custom config files, or other config mechanisms such as Java System Properties, they are a language- and OS-agnostic standard. … In a twelve-factor app, env vars are granular controls, each fully orthogonal to other env vars. They are never grouped together as “environments,” but instead are independently managed for each deploy. This is a model that scales up smoothly as the app naturally expands into more deploys over its lifetime.

Quick Start

Suppose you have this json default configuration for your node application:

var defaultConfiguration = {
  http_port: 8000,
  https_port: 8001,
  mongodb: {
    name: 'api', // Database name
    host: '127.0.0.1', // Database host
    user: '', // Database user
    password: '', // Database password
    port: 27017,
    options: {} // MongoDB options
  }
}

Then you want to override this configuration (or subset of it) for your production environment. You define the next environment variables :

API_APP_HTTP_PORT='80';
API_APP_HTTPS_PORT='443';
API_APP_MONGODB_NAME='api_db';
API_APP_MONGODB_HOST='api.example.com';
API_APP_MONGODB_USER='username';
API_APP_MONGODB_PASSWORD='secret password';

In your code your can override defaultConfiguration object with these environment variables:

var nodeenvconfiguration = require('node-env-configuration');
var config = nodeenvconfiguration({
  defaults: defaultConfiguration,
  prefix: 'apiApp' // Read only env vars starting with API_APP prefix
});

Notes

• Underscore character in environment variables (excluding prefix underscore) results in adding a new hierarchy level in result object:

API_APP_MONGODB_NAME = 'api_db'  # Matches obj.mongodb.name property 
API_APP_MONGODB_URL_HOST = 'api.example.com'  # Matches obj.mongodb.url.host propery 

Configuration parameters

Name	Default Value	Description
prefix	''	Pascal case prefix. Restrict variables to read from environment to those starting with this prefix in snake case
arraySeparator	null	This character, if specified, is used as an array separator. So if a variable contains this character, the variable is parsed as an array of values
defaults	{}	Default object values

Running Tests

$ npm test

License

MIT