Yamlenv is a zero-dependency module that loads environment variables from a env.yaml
file into process.env
. Storing configuration in the environment separate from code is based on The Twelve-Factor App methodology.
# with npm
npm install yamlenv
# or with Yarn
yarn add yamlenv
As early as possible in your application, require and configure yamlenv.
require('yamlenv').config()
Create a env.yaml
file in the root directory of your project. Add
environment-specific variables on new lines in the form of NAME: VALUE
.
For example:
DB_HOST: localhost
DB_USER: root
DB_PASS: s1mpl3
That's it.
process.env
now has the keys and values you defined in your env.yaml
file.
const db = require('db')
db.connect({
host: process.env.DB_HOST,
username: process.env.DB_USER,
password: process.env.DB_PASS
})
You can use the --require
(-r
) command line option to preload yamlenv. By doing this, you do not need to require and load yamlenv in your application code. This is the preferred approach when using import
instead of require
.
$ node -r yamlenv/config your_script.js
The configuration options below are supported as command line arguments in the format yamlenv_config_<option>=value
$ node -r yamlenv/config your_script.js yamlenv_config_path=/custom/path/to/your/env/vars
Alias: load
config
will read your env.yaml file, parse the contents, assign it to
process.env
,
and return an Object with a parsed
key containing the loaded content or an error
key if it failed.
const result = yamlenv.config()
if (result.error) {
throw result.error
}
console.log(result.parsed)
You can additionally, pass options to config
.
Default: path.resolve(process.cwd(), 'env.yaml')
You can specify a custom path if your file containing environment variables is named or located differently.
require('yamlenv').config({path: '/full/custom/path/to/your/env/vars'})
Default: utf8
You may specify the encoding of your file containing environment variables using this option.
require('yamlenv').config({encoding: 'base64'})
The engine which parses the contents of your file containing environment variables is available to use. It accepts a String or Buffer and will return an Object with the parsed keys and values.
const yamlenv = require('yamlenv')
const buf = Buffer.from('BASIC: basic')
const config = yamlenv.parse(buf) // will return an object
console.log(typeof config, config) // object { BASIC : 'basic' }
The parsing engine currently supports the following rules:
BASIC: basic
becomes{BASIC: 'basic'}
- empty lines are skipped
- lines beginning with
#
are treated as comments - empty values become empty strings (
EMPTY:
becomes{EMPTY: ''}
) - single and double quoted values are escaped (
SINGLE_QUOTE: 'quoted'
becomes{SINGLE_QUOTE: "quoted"}
) - new lines are expanded if in double quotes (
MULTILINE: "new\nline"
becomes
{MULTILINE: 'new
line'}
- inner quotes are maintained (think JSON) (
JSON: {"foo": "bar"}
becomes{JSON:"{\"foo\": \"bar\"}"
) - whitespace is removed from both ends of the value (see more on
trim
) (FOO: " some value "
becomes{FOO: 'some value'}
)
No. We strongly recommend against committing your env.yaml
file to version
control. It should only include environment-specific values such as database
passwords or API keys. Your production database should have a different
password than your development database.
No. We strongly recommend against having a "main" env.yaml
file and an "environment" env.yaml
file like env.test.yaml
. Your config should vary between deploys, and you should not be sharing values between environments.
In a twelve-factor app, env vars are granular controls, each fully orthogonal to other env vars. They are never grouped together as “environments”, but instead are independently managed for each deploy. This is a model that scales up smoothly as the app naturally expands into more deploys over its lifetime.
We will never modify any environment variables that have already been set. In particular, if there is a variable in your env.yaml
file which collides with one that already exists in your environment, then that variable will be skipped. This behavior allows you to override all env.yaml
configurations with a machine-specific environment, although it is not recommended.
If you want to override process.env
you can do something like this:
const fs = require('fs')
const yamlenv = require('yamlenv')
const envConfig = yamlenv.parse(fs.readFileSync('.env.override'))
for (var k in envConfig) {
process.env[k] = envConfig[k]
}
See LICENSE