Get and Set Environment Variables in Node.js
One of the best ways to use sensitive information in open source repositories without hard-coding the information within publicly available repositories is setting environment variables. Set the environment variables on the server, retrieve them by key within your application.
When using Node.js, you can retrieve environment variables by key from the process.env object:
var mode = process.env.mode; // 'PRODUCTION', for example
var apiKey = process.env.apiKey; // '38294729347392432'
There are time when you may want to set environment variables while you run your node app -- these are set temporarily while the process is still running. A common case is simulating environment variables during testing. You can temporarily set these variables by pegging items onto the process.env object:
process.env.mode = 'TESTING';
// Now app code knows not to do destructive transactions!
Simple enough but worth documenting for future use!
![Create a CSS Cube]()
CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals. Add animation and you've got something really neat. Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...
![Welcome to My New Office]()
My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...
![MooTools Link Fading]()
We all know that we can set a different link color (among other properties) on the hover event, but why not show a little bit more dynamism by making the original color fade to the next? Using MooTools 1.2, you can achieve that effect.
The MooTools...
![Using jQuery and MooTools Together]()
There's yet another reason to master more than one JavaScript library: you can use some of them together! Since MooTools is prototype-based and jQuery is not, jQuery and MooTools may be used together on the same page.
The XHTML and JavaScript
jQuery is namespaced so the...
I believe it’s more common to use
process.env.NODE_ENVinstead ofprocess.env.modeThis is an interesting problem. What if you are using aws or heroku for hosting? You could have your deployment script setup the keys, but you’d need to prompt each time you create a new instance.
I encrypted the keys in a json file with AES 256 and in my run/deploy script it prompts for a password and decrypts it running the rest of the application with env variables. It’s not perfected yet, but this might be a good way to put it on github.
Are these variables just being set via the command line?
Yep!
I have had great success with json-configurator (https://www.npmjs.com/package/json-configurator). Use it with
process.env.NODE_ENVas a input.require('json-configurator')(configJson, process.env.NODE_ENV ).userEndpoint;