Dotenv Vault extends the proven & trusted foundation of dotenv, adding new standards .env.me and .env.vault. Together, these new standards let you sync and deploy your .env files – quickly & securely. Stop sharing them over insecure channels like Slack and email, and never lose an important .env file again. All from the same people that pioneered dotenv.

# install locally (recommended)
npm install dotenv-vault --save

Dotenv Vault extends .env so a much of this will purposely be familiar with a few new commands to learn.

• .env holds your project's development secrets. It should NEVER be committed to code.
• .env.me authenticates you to sync your .env file. It should NEVER be committed to code.
• .env.vault is a local encrypted vault of your secrets across all environments. It can and SHOULD be committed safely to code.

Create a .env file in the root of your project:

S3_BUCKET="YOURS3BUCKET"
SECRET_KEY="YOURSECRETKEYGOESHERE"

As early as possible in your application, import and configure dotenv-vault:

require('dotenv-vault').config()
console.log(process.env) // remove this after you've confirmed it working

That's it. process.env now has the keys and values you defined in your .env file:

require('dotenv-vault').config()

...

s3.getBucketCors({Bucket: process.env.S3_BUCKET}, function(err, data) {})

For the next steps, you will need your own Dotenv Account.

Usage is similar to git. Run the command:

npx dotenv-vault new

Follow those instructions and then run:

npx dotenv-vault login

Then run push and pull:

npx dotenv-vault push
npx dotenv-vault pull

Great! You just synced your .env file. Commit your .env.vault file to code, and tell your teammates to run npx dotenv-vault pull.

Dotenv Vault comes with 4 environments by default - development, ci, staging, and production.

You can push and pull from these environments as well.

Let's set up your production environment.

npx dotenv-vault open production

Edit the values and save.

You need to fully set up your .env.vault file next. Run the command:

npx dotenv-vault build

npx dotenv-vault buildkeys

That's it!

Details coming soon.

Details coming soon.

Dotenv Vault, just like Dotenv, exposes two functions:

• config
• parse

config will read and decrypt your .env.vault file, parse the contents, assign it to process.env, and return an Object with a parsed key containing the loaded content or an error key if it failed.

This happens of DOTENV_KEY is set. If DOTENV_KEY is not set, config fallsback to reading your .env file.

const result = dotenv.config()

if (result.error) {
  throw result.error
}

console.log(result.parsed)

You can additionally, pass options to config.

COMING SOON!

Default: path.resolve(process.cwd(), '.env')

Specify a custom path if your file containing environment variables is located elsewhere.

require('dotenv').config({ path: '/custom/path/to/.env' })

COMING SOON!

Default: utf8

Specify the encoding of your file containing environment variables.

require('dotenv').config({ encoding: 'latin1' })

Default: false

Turn on logging to help debug why certain keys or values are not being set as you expect.

require('dotenv').config({ debug: process.env.DEBUG })

Default: false

Override any environment variables that have already been set on your machine with values from your .env file.

require('dotenv').config({ override: true })

The engine which parses the contents of your file containing environment variables is available to use. It accepts a String or Buffer and will return an Object with the parsed keys and values.

const dotenv = require('dotenv')
const buf = Buffer.from('BASIC=basic')
const config = dotenv.parse(buf) // will return an object
console.log(typeof config, config) // object { BASIC : 'basic' }

Default: false

Turn on logging to help debug why certain keys or values are not being set as you expect.

const dotenv = require('dotenv')
const buf = Buffer.from('hello world')
const opt = { debug: true }
const config = dotenv.parse(buf, opt)
// expect a debug message because the buffer is not in KEY=VAL form