Node.js DeploymentLesson 78Free preview

Node Env Variables

This lesson is part of Node.js · All levels

Summary

This lesson describes environment variables as a way to configure Node.js applications from outside the code. You read values through process.env, such as PORT, DATABASE_URL, and API_KEY. His best practice is to keep secrets in the uncommitted, then load them with the dotenv library.

Key points

Process.env contains the Node process environment variable; its value is always a string.
Install dotenv and call require('dotenv').config() to read the .env file.
Add .env to .gitignore so that the secret does not enter the repository.
Provide the default value: process.env.PORT not 3000 so that the application remains running locally.
Common cases: NODE_ENV, DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET, API keys.

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