env-create

Reads in a valid JSON file and creates environment variables for every top level object found in the resulting object, unless an environment variable of that name already exists. It will not overwrite existing environment variables. It will only create environment variables for the top level objects.

Installation

npm i env-create --save
Although at this point you should have made --save your default

Basic usage

Let's assume you have a .env.json at the root level of your project with the following contents

{
  "secret1": {
      "client_id": "123445",
  },
  "secret2": {
    "access_token": "reallylongtoken",
  },
}

Somewhere early in your code before you need the environment variables you add

require('env-create').load() 
const firstSecret = JSON.parse(process.env.secret1);
const secondSecret = JSON.parse(process.env.secret2);

The load() method will create a process environment variable for every top level object in the the default .env.json file located at the root of your project. The load() method optionally takes a JSON object with properties for path, and encoding. Both properties are optional. The function returns an array of messages. If an environment variable already existed and would have been overwritten there were will be a message letting you know that.

Option usage

Using a relative path to go up one folder out of your project and into an ENV_VARS folder to get the file named gsweet.env.json

require('env-create').load({
    path: "../ENV_VARS/gsweet.env.json", 
    encode: "utf8"))  
const firstSecret = JSON.parse(process.env.secret1);
const secondSecret = JSON.parse(process.env.secret2);

You can also use an absolute path which is likely preferred if you store authentication data that is required among multiple projects

const result = require('env-create').load({
  path: "/User/yourUserName/ENV_VARS/gsweet.env.json",
  encode: "utf8"))

Acknowledgement

Inspired by dotenv