env-cmd

A simple node program for executing commands using an environment from an env file.

Install

npm install env-cmd or npm install -g env-cmd

Basic Usage

Environment file ./test/.env

# This is a comment
ENV1=THANKS
ENV2=FOR ALL
ENV3=THE FISH

Package.json

{
  "scripts": {
    "test": "env-cmd ./test/.env mocha -R spec"
  }
}

or

Terminal

./node_modules/.bin/env-cmd ./test/.env node index.js

Advanced Usage

--fallback file usage option

You can specify an .env.local (or any name) env file, add that to your .gitignore and use that in your local development environment. Then you can use a regular .env file in root directory with production configs that can get committed to a private/protected repo. When env-cmd cannot find the .env.local file it will fallback to looking for a regular .env file.

Environment file ./.env.local

# This is a comment
ENV1=THANKS
ENV2=FOR ALL
ENV3=THE FISH

Fallback Environment file ./.env

# This can be used as an example fallback
ENV1=foo
ENV2=bar
ENV3=baz
ENV4=quux
ENV5=gorge

Package.json uses ./.env as a fallback

{
  "scripts": {
    "test": "env-cmd --fallback ./.env.local mocha -R spec"
  }
}

or

Terminal

# uses ./.env as a fallback, because it can't find `./.env.local`
./node_modules/.bin/env-cmd ./.env.local node index.js

.rc file usage

For more complex projects, a .env-cmdrc file can be defined in the root directory and supports as many environments as you want. Instead of passing the path to a .env file to env-cmd, simply pass the name of the environment you want to use thats in your .env-cmdrc file. You may also use multiple environment names to merge env vars together.

.rc file .env-cmdrc

{
  "development": {
    "ENV1": "Thanks",
    "ENV2": "For All"
  },
  "test": {
    "ENV1": "No Thanks",
    "ENV3": "!"
  },
  "production": {
    "ENV1": "The Fish"
  }
}

Terminal

./node_modules/.bin/env-cmd production node index.js
# Or for multiple environments (where `production` vars override `test` vars,
# but both are included)
./node_modules/.bin/env-cmd test,production node index.js

--no-override option

Sometimes you want to set env variables from a file without overriding existing process env vars or shell env vars.

Terminal

ENV1=welcome ./node_modules/.bin/env-cmd --no-override ./test/.env node index.js

Examples

You can find examples of how to use the various options above by visiting the examples repo env-cmd-examples.

Environment File Formats

These are the currently accepted environment file formats. If any other formats are desired please create an issue.

• key=value
• Key/value pairs as JSON
• JavaScript file exporting an object
• .env-cmdrc file (as valid json) in execution directory

Path Rules

This lib attempts to follow standard bash path rules. The rules are as followed:

Home Directory = /Users/test

Working Directory = /Users/test/Development/app

Type	Input Path	Expanded Path
Absolute	/some/absolute/path.env	/some/absolute/path.env
Home Directory with ~	~/starts/on/homedir/path.env	/Users/test/starts/on/homedir/path.env
Relative	./some/relative/path.env or some/relative/path.env	/Users/test/Development/app/some/relative/path.env
Relative with parent dir	../some/relative/path.env	/Users/test/Development/some/relative/path.env

Why

Because sometimes its just too cumbersome passing lots of environment variables to scripts. Its usually just easier to have a file with all the vars in them, especially for development and testing.

Do not commit sensitive environment data to a public git repo!

Related Projects

cross-env - Cross platform setting of environment scripts

Special Thanks

Special thanks to cross-env for inspiration (use's the same cross-spawn lib underneath too).

Contributors

• Eric Lanehart
• Jon Scheiding
• Alexander Praetorius
• Anton Versal

Contributing Guide

I welcome all pull requests. Please make sure you add appropriate test cases for any features added. Before opening a PR please make sure to run the following scripts:

• npm run lint checks for code errors and formats according to js-standard
• npm test make sure all tests pass
• npm run test-cover make sure the coverage has not decreased from current master