Dot ENV Parser

A simple and lightweight .env parser for Node.js.

Installation

npm i @mongez/dotenv

OR

yarn add @mongez/dotenv

Features

• Automatically detects the environment file based on NODE_ENV variable.
• Supports dynamic variables.
• Supports comments.
• Supports shared env file.
• Supports data types.
• Supports default value.
• Supports loading env file from a custom path.
• Supports env function to get the value of the variable.
• Optionally overrides process.env object.

Usage

import { loadEnv } from "@mongez/dotenv";

loadEnv();

By default it will load .env file from the root of your project, but you can pass a path to the file as an argument.

loadEnv("/path/to/.env");

Override process.env

Any loaded variables from env files will automatically overrides process.env object, but you can disable this feature by passing override to false in the second argument.

// disable overriding process.env but auto detect env file
loadEnv(undefined, { override: false });

// with custom .env path
loadEnv("/path/to/.env", { override: false });

Parse Env Based On Current Environment

If not arguments passed, the parser will try to load the proper .env file, for example of process.env.NODE_ENV is production, it will try to load .env.production file and so on.

If none of the files exists, it will load .env file.

Environment Variables

You can use environment variables in your .env file, for example:

APP_NAME=My App
APP_URL=https://myapp.com

Getting Environment Variables Values

Once the .env file is loaded, you can access the environment variables values using process.env object directly or you can use env function.

import { env } from "@mongez/dotenv";

console.log(env("APP_NAME")); // My App

console.log(env("APP_URL")); // https://myapp.com

You can pass a default value as a second argument, in case the variable is not defined.

console.log(env("APP_NAME", "My App")); // My App

console.log(env("DEBUG", false)); // false

Dynamic Environment Variables

If text contains ${ and } it will be treated as a dynamic variable, and it will be replaced with the value of the variable.

APP_NAME=My App
APP_URL=https://myapp.com
APP_URL_WITH_NAME="${APP_URL}/${APP_NAME}"

You can use them in your code like this:

import { env } from "@mongez/dotenv";

console.log(env("APP_URL_WITH_NAME")); // https://myapp.com/My App

If the value contains whitespace, then it should be wrapped in double quotes

APP_NAME="My App"

Data Types

The parser will try to parse the value of the variable to the proper data type, for example:

APP_NAME=My App
APP_URL=https://myapp.com
APP_URL_WITH_NAME="${APP_URL}/${APP_NAME}"
DEBUG=true
PORT=3001

You can use them in your code like this:

import { env } from "@mongez/dotenv";

console.log(env("APP_NAME")); // My App

console.log(env("APP_URL")); // https://myapp.com

console.log(env("APP_URL_WITH_NAME")); // https://myapp.com/My App

console.log(env("DEBUG")); // true boolean

console.log(env("PORT")); // 3001 number

Comments

You can add comments to your .env file, for example by adding # at the beginning of the line.

# This is a comment
APP_NAME=My App

Get All Environment Variables

You can get all environment variables using env.all() function.

import { env } from "@mongez/dotenv";

console.log(env.all());

Set environment file directory

You can set the directory of the environment file using by passing the directory to the second argument in dir property.

loadEnv("/path/to/.env", { dir: "/path/to/directory" });

Shared env

Sometimes env files (i.e .env.development and .env.production) contain same variables with same values, for example APP_NAME="My App", in this case we'd have to write that variable in all environment files.

Luckily, we can use shared env files, for example we can create a file called .env.shared and add all shared variables there, and then we can load it in all environment files.

# .env.shared
APP_NAME="My App"
APP_URL="https://myapp.com"

This feature is set to true by default, if you want to disable it, set in the second argument loadSharedEnv to false.

loadEnv("/path/to/.env", { loadSharedEnv: false });

Reset Environment Variables

To reset environment variable to the initial value of process.env, you can use resetEnv function.

import { resetEnv } from "@mongez/dotenv";

resetEnv();