renvy - a sensible and controllable env file loader

A bit like foreman, uses dotenv and comes from the create-react-app environment loader code.

Installation

npm install --save renvy

Typical usage

Important: renvy will default to NODE_ENV=development if there is no value on NODE_ENV.

// populates process.env
require('renvy'); // do this as early as possible in the code

// Also populate and return
const { raw, stringified } = require('renvy');

Env file loading priority

Files on the left have more priority than files on the right:

• renvy: .env.development.local, .env.development, .env.local, .env
• NODE_ENV=production renvy: .env.production.local, .env.production, .env.local, .env
• npm test: .env.test.local, .env.test, .env (note .env.local is missing)

• .env: Default.
• .env.local: Local overrides. This file is loaded for all environments except test.
• .env.development, .env.test, .env.production: Environment-specific settings.
• .env.development.local, .env.test.local, .env.production.local: Local overrides of environment-specific settings.

Files on the left have more priority than files on the right:

• npm start: .env.development.local, .env.development, .env.local, .env
• npm run build: .env.production.local, .env.production, .env.local, .env
• npm test: .env.test.local, .env.test, .env (note .env.local is missing)

These variables will act as the defaults if the machine does not explicitly set them.

Please refer to the dotenv documentation for more details.

Note: If you are defining environment variables for development, your CI and/or hosting platform will most likely need these defined as well. Consult their documentation how to do this. For example, see the documentation for Travis CI or Heroku.

Features

• Expands $VAR by default (via dotenv-expand). Important escaped \$ does not work, and is expanded to undefined. To disable env expansion, set environment value NO_EXPAND=true.
• Supports .env.example if the file is found in the current working directory (very similar to dotenv-safe - but merges environment values first, then checks)

CLI usage

Beyond using the package as a dependency, a CLI utility is provided for testing environment values and also injecting the environment variables into a command.

Assuming the package was installed locally to your project, and using npx to run a .bin command:

$ NODE_ENV=test npx renvy
> # prints entire environment loaded

$ NODE_ENV=test npx renvy NODE_ENV
> test

$ NODE_ENV=test npx renvy -- node -e "console.log(process.env.NODE_ENV)"
> test

-- Double dash to signify the end of the options

When passing -- to renvy everything afterwards will be executed with the modified environment (a bit like the foreman command line too).

Naming

renvy is weird, but it comes from it previously being called @remy/envy and since the envy namespace was gone and people feel weird about installed scoped dependencies when they belong to individuals, I slapped my first initial on the name, thus: renvy.