dotenv-parse-variables

Parse dotenv files for Boolean, Array, and Number variable types, built for Lad and Forward Email.

Table of Contents

• Install
• Example
• Usage
• Options
• Contributors
• License

Install

npm:

npm install dotenv-parse-variables

yarn:

yarn add dotenv-parse-variables

Example

Imagine you have a configuration file at .env with the following:

FOO=bar
BAZ=2
BEEP=false
BOOP=some,thing,that,goes,wow
# note how we use an asterisk here to turn off the parsing for this variable
BLEEP=false*
# note how we use an asterisk in the array to turn off parsing for an array key value
PING=ping,true*,2,100
# note a string between bacticks won't be parsed
PONG=`some,thing,that,goes,wow`

After using this plugin, the environment variables are parsed to their proper types.

To test it out, simply log the returned object in your console:

console.log(env);

And you'll see that it outputs the properly parsed variable types:

{
  // String
  FOO: 'bar',
  // Number
  BAZ: 2,
  // Boolean
  BEEP: false,
  // Array
  BOOP: [ 'some', 'thing', 'that', 'goes', 'wow' ],
  // NOTE: this was not parsed due to the * asterisk override above
  BLEEP: 'false',
  // NOTE: only the "true*" above was opted out through the use of an asterisk
  PING: [ 'ping', 'true', 2, 100 ],
  // NOTE: this was not parsed because the string was between bacticks
  PONG: 'some,thing,that,goes,wow'
}

If your configuration line ends in * it will not be parsed by this package, which allows you to keep values as the String variable type if needed. Also when you encapsulate a value between bacticks e.g. `value`, the value won't be parsed and it will return as a String variable. This can be used in situations where you for example have a , inside your string and it should not be parsed as an array.

Usage

This package works well with dotenv, however we also recommend to use dotenv-extended and dotenv-expand as we do in Lad. You could also simply just use Lad or @ladjs/env specifically.

Example with dotenv:

const dotenv = require('dotenv');
const dotenvParseVariables = require('dotenv-parse-variables');

let env = dotenv.config({})
if (env.error) throw env.error;
env = dotenvParseVariables(env.parsed);

console.log(env);

Example with dotenv-extended (which supports a well-defined .env file) and dotenv-expand (which supports variable interpolation):

const dotenvExtended = require('dotenv-extended');
const dotenvMustache = require('dotenv-mustache');
const dotenvParseVariables = require('dotenv-parse-variables');

let env = dotenvExtended.load({
  silent: false,
  errorOnMissing: true,
  errorOnExtra: true
});
env = dotenvMustache(env);
env = dotenvParseVariables(env);

console.log(env);

If you don't want to use this package to parse variable types, you could also use getenv (but it requires more work).

Options

A second argument can be provided to dotenvParseVariables with an object of options.

The defaults are listed below:

• assignToProcessEnv (Boolean) - defaults to true, whether or not to assign the parsed values to process.env
• overrideProcessEnv (Boolean) - defaults to false, whether or not to override existing values in process.env
• ignoreFunctions (Boolean) - defaults to true, whether or not to ignore functions in the parsed values returned

Contributors

Name	Website
Nick Baugh	http://niftylettuce.com

License

MIT © Nick Baugh