How can I set an environmental variable in node.js?

Question

How can I set an environmental variable in node.js?

I would prefer not to rely on anything platform specific, such as running export or cmd.exe's set.

Answer 1

You can set your environment variables in process.env:

process.env['VARIABLE'] = 'value'; 

-OR-

process.env.VARIABLE = 'value'; 

Node should take care of the platform specifics.

Answer 2

First you should install this package :- https://github.com/motdotla/dotenv [npm install dotenv]

Then you need to create a .env file in your project's root directory, and there you can add variables like below:-

NODE_ENV=PRODUCTION DATABASE_HOST=localhost 

Now you can easily access these variables in your code like below:-

require('dotenv').config() console.log(process.env.NODE_ENV); 

It worked for me, hopefully that helps.