How do I setup the dotenv file in Node.js?

Question

I am trying to use the dotenv NPM package and it is not working for me. I have a file config/config.js with the following content:

Answer 1

Make sure to set cwd in the pm2 config to the correct directory for any calls to dotenv.config().

Example: Your index.js file is in /app/src, your .env file is in /app. Your index.js file has this

dotenv.config({path: "../.env"});

Your pm2 json config should have this: "cwd": "/app/src", "script": "index.js"

You could also use dotenv.config({path: path.join(__dirname, "../.env")}); to avoid the CWD issue. You will still have a problem if you move the .env or the index.js file relative to each other.

Answer 2

In my case, I've created a wrapper JS file in which I have the logic to select the correct variables according to my environment, dynamically.

I have these two functions, one it's a wrapper of a simple dotenv functionality, and the other discriminate between environments and set the result to the process.env object.

setEnvVariablesByEnvironment : ()=>{
		return new Promise((resolve)=>{

			if (process.env.NODE_ENV === undefined || process.env.NODE_ENV ==='development'){
				logger.info('Lower / Development environment was detected');

				environmentManager.getEnvironmentFromEnvFile()
					.then(envFile => {
						resolve(envFile);
					});

			}else{
				logger.warn('Production or Stage environment was detected.');
				resolve({
					payload: process.env,
					flag: true,
					status: 0,
					log: 'Returned environment variables placed in .env file.'
				});
			}


		});
	} ,

	/*
	Get environment variables from .env file, using dotEnv npm module.
	 */
	getEnvironmentFromEnvFile: () => {
		return new Promise((resolve)=>{
			logger.info('Trying to get configuration of environment variables from .env file');

			env.config({
				debug: (process.env.NODE_ENV === undefined || process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development')
			});

			resolve({
				payload: process.env,
				flag: true,
				status: 0,
				log: 'Returned environment variables placed in .env file.'
			});
		});
	},

So, in my server.js file i only added the reference:

const envManager = require('./lib/application/config/environment/environment-manager');

And in my entry-point (server.js), it's just simple as use it.

envManager.setEnvVariablesByEnvironment()
.then(envVariables=>{
    process.env= envVariables.payload;

    const port = process.env.PORT_EXPOSE;
    microService.listen(port, '0.0.0.0' , () =>{

        let welcomeMessage = `Micro Service started at ${Date.now()}`;
        logger.info(welcomeMessage);

        logger.info(`${configuration.about.name} port configured  -> : ${port}`);
        logger.info(`App Author: ${configuration.about.owner}`);
        logger.info(`App Version: ${configuration.about.version}`);
        logger.info(`Created by: ${configuration.about.author}`);

    });
});

Answer 3

I am using NodeJS on windows 10. I used process.env.var-name to access the variables but failed because it gives me windows path variables as a JSON object, so I installed dotenv ( npm install dotenv ). dotenv gets process envirnoment variables from your project's .evn file

1. npm install dotenv or yarn add dotenv

2. const dotenv = require('dotenv'); dotenv.config();

3. process.env.variable_name

1. output

Answer 4

Had the same problem. I used dotenv-webpack and need to define

plugins: [
  new Dotenv()
]

in both webpack production and webpack base files (I use webpack merge). If was not defined in both files then it did not work.

Answer 5

I had a problem also with .env variables not loading and being undefined.

What I tried:

index.js:

import dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config();
import models from './models';

models.js

import Sequelize from 'sequelize';
const sequelize = new Sequelize(
    process.env.DATABASE,
    process.env.DATABASE_USER,
    process.env.DATABASE_PASSWORD,
    {
        dialect: 'postgres',
    }
);

Apparently, because of how loading the imports works in nodejs, the import of models in index.js caused that the models.js was executed before dotenv.config(). Therefore I got undefined values from process.env.

When I changed models.js to do the dotenv configuration like:

import Sequelize from 'sequelize';
import dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config();
const sequelize = new Sequelize(
    process.env.DATABASE,
    process.env.DATABASE_USER,
    process.env.DATABASE_PASSWORD,
    {
        dialect: 'postgres',
    }
);

it started to work!

Answer 6

I cloned a repo from Github and went through every one of the suggestions here. After a lot of frustration, I realized that npm install did not install any of the modules and my node_modules folder was empty the whole time.

QUICK FIX:
1) delete your node_modules folder
2) delete your package-lock.json
3) run npm install