Environment Variables and dotenv – Node.js Tutorial 12

In this tutorial, we will learn about environment variables and how to use dotenv in a Node.js application.

Environment Variables

Environment variables are global variables that are used by the operating system to pass information to processes. In Node.js, we can use environment variables to store configuration variables, sensitive information such as API keys, and other application settings.

Environment variables are accessed using the process.env object in Node.js. We can set environment variables using the command line before running our Node.js application, or by loading them from a file using dotenv.

dotenv

dotenv is a Node.js module that allows us to load environment variables from a .env file into process.env. This makes it easy to manage and configure environment variables for our Node.js application.

To use dotenv, we first need to install it using npm:

npm install dotenv

Once installed, we can create a .env file in the root directory of our Node.js application and add our environment variables in the following format:


API_KEY=your_api_key
DB_HOST=your_db_host


Then, in our Node.js application, we can use dotenv to load these variables into process.env by requiring it at the top of our script:


require('dotenv').config();


Now, we can access our environment variables using process.env.API_KEY and process.env.DB_HOST throughout our application.

Conclusion

Using environment variables and dotenv in our Node.js applications allows us to securely manage our configuration settings, API keys, and other sensitive information. This helps keep our code clean and organized, and makes it easy to configure our application for different environments.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful in understanding how to use environment variables and dotenv in Node.js applications. Happy coding!