Organizing Environment Variables Golang

Question

In Node.js I use the nconf module to house environment variables like S3 keys, GCM keys, etc for each of my projects.

I haven't been able to find a similar solution in Go.

What are the generally accepted tools to help manage environment variables for each Go project?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I would strongly recommend using github.com/namsral/flag instead. It's like the built in flag except you can also supply the parameters via environment variables.

For example, suppose you have this code:

package main

import "fmt"
import "github.com/namsral/flag"

func main() {
    var port = 3000
    flag.IntVar(&port, "port", port, "Port number")
    flag.Parse()
    fmt.Println("You seem to prefer", port)
}

Then you can supply the values with either a command line option or an environment variable:

:~/dev/GO$ go run dummy.go
You seem to prefer 3000
:~/dev/GO$ go run dummy.go -port=1234
You seem to prefer 1234
:~/dev/GO$ PORT=4321 go run dummy.go
You seem to prefer 4321
:~/dev/GO$ PORT=4321 go run dummy.go -port=5555
You seem to prefer 5555

This might matter when it's hard to supply command line args. For example, if you use gin to automatically restart a server you have no way to supply command line arguments since gin is just calling go run on the main code without any arguments passed along.

Answer 2

I did some reading on this a while back when I was getting started with Go. According to this link, http://peter.bourgon.org/go-in-production/, they recommend using CLI flags (parameters) instead of environment vars - they even convert environment vars to flags to their CLI apps.

It took some getting used to; but, I really do see the advantages of going pure CLI flags between development, staging and production environments - having specific scripts for each environment.

For example, here's a little web app I wrote recently:

// global flags
var isdebug bool
var port int
var cert string
var key string
var dbdsn string
var dbmaxidle int
var dbmaxopen int
var imguri string

// init is the entry point for the entire web application.
func init() {

    log.Println("Starting wwwgo ...")

    // setup the flags
    //flag.StringVar(&host, "host", "", "Specify a host to redirect to. Use this to redirect all traffic to a single url.")
    flag.IntVar(&port, "port", 8080, "Specify the port to listen to.")
    flag.BoolVar(&isdebug, "isdebug", false, "Set to true to run the app in debug mode.  In debug, it may panic on some errors.")
    flag.StringVar(&cert, "cert", "", "Enables listening on 443 with -cert and -key files specified.  This must be a full path to the certificate .pem file. See http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#ListenAndServeTLS for more information.")
    flag.StringVar(&key, "key", "", "Enables listening on 443 with -cert and -key files specified.  This must be a full path to the key .pem file. See http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#ListenAndServeTLS for more information.")
    flag.StringVar(&dbdsn, "dbdsn", "root:root@tcp(localhost:3306)/dev_db?timeout=5s&tls=false&autocommit=true", "Specifies the MySql DSN connection.")
    flag.IntVar(&dbmaxidle, "dbmaxidle", 0, "Sets the database/sql MaxIdleConns.")
    flag.IntVar(&dbmaxopen, "dbmaxopen", 500, "Sets the database/sql MaxOpenConns.")
    flag.StringVar(&imguri, "imguri", "/cdn/uploads/", "Set this to the full base uri of all images, for example on a remote CDN server or local relative virtual directory.")
    flag.Parse()

    // log our flags
    if isdebug != false {
        log.Println("DEBUG mode enabled")
    }
    if cert != "" && key != "" {
        log.Println("Attempting SSL binding with supplied cert and key.")
    }
    if dbdsn != "" {
        log.Printf("Using default dbdsn: %s", dbdsn)
    }

    ...
}

This really becomes nice in staging/production environments.

A quick ./wwwgo -h for "what the heck was that parameter?" gives you full documentation:

admin@dev01:~/code/frontend/src/wwwgo [master]$ ./wwwgo -h
Usage of ./wwwgo:
  -cert="": Enables listening on 443 with -cert and -key files specified.  This must be a full path to the certificate .pem file. See http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#ListenAndServeTLS for more information.
  -dbdsn="root:root@tcp(localhost:3306)/dev_db?timeout=5s&tls=false&autocommit=true": Specifies the MySql DSN connection.
  -dbmaxidle=0: Sets the database/sql MaxIdleConns.
  -dbmaxopen=500: Sets the database/sql MaxOpenConns.
  -imguri="/cdn/uploads/": Set this to the full base uri of all images, for example on a remote CDN server or local relative virtual directory.
  -isdebug=false: Set to true to run the app in debug mode.  In debug, it may panic on some errors.
  -key="": Enables listening on 443 with -cert and -key files specified.  This must be a full path to the key .pem file. See http://golang.org/pkg/net/http/#ListenAndServeTLS for more information.
  -port=8080: Specify the port to listen to.

Very nice to have many options at CLI, and no documentation required - it's built into the flags package.

You can clearly see the defaults immediately.

With this type of documentation, I tend to setup all the defaults for common "development environments" that the team uses. We all have root/root access to our local databases. We all are using port 8080 for this particular web app during development, etc. That way, you just have to run:

go build
./wwwgo

And the app runs with all defaults - defaults that are documented. In production, just override the defaults. The built-in flag parsers will panic the application if any parameters are in the wrong format, which is also very nice.