Manage environment variables in TypeScript

In a typical web application, you might have sensitive information like database credentials, API keys, and other configuration data that you don’t want to hardcode into your codebase. Instead, you can use environment variables to keep this data separate and secure. In this article, we’ll discuss how to use the dotenv library to manage environment variables in TypeScript.

What is dotenv?

dotenv is a popular library that loads environment variables from a .env file into process.env, making it easy to access them in your code. With dotenv, you can keep your sensitive information separate from your codebase, making it easier to manage and secure.

Installation

To get started with dotenv, you need to install it as a dependency in your project.

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npm install dotenv

Usage

Once you have installed dotenv, you need to create a .env file in the root of your project. This file should contain your environment variables in the KEY=VALUE format, with each variable on a new line. For example:

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DATABASE_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/mydb
API_KEY=abc123

In your TypeScript code, you can now access these environment variables using process.env. For example:

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import * as dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config();

const dbUrl = process.env.DATABASE_URL;
const apiKey = process.env.API_KEY;

Note that you need to call dotenv.config() to load the variables from the .env file into process.env. You can call this function at the beginning of your application or whenever you need to load new variables.

Happy Friday, cheers! 🍺