typeorm config with .env variables

Question

i have this ormconfig.json:

{
  "type": "postgres",
  "host": "db-pg",
  "port": 5432,
  "username": "spirit",
  "password": "api",
  "database": "emasa_ci",
  "synchronize": true,
  "logging": false,
  "entities": ["dist/src/entity/**/*.js"],
  "migrations": ["dist/src/migration/**/*.js"],
  "subscribers": ["dist/src/subscriber/**/*.js"],
  "cli": {
    "entitiesDir": "dist/src/entity",
    "migrationsDir": "dist/src/migration",
    "subscribersDir": "dist/src/subscriber"
  }
}

and have this env:

SERVER_PORT=4000
DB_HOST=db-pg
DB_PORT=5432
DB_USER=spirit
DB_PASS=api
DB_NAME=emasa_ci

but .env doesn't work in .json and so I don't know how I'm going to use my enviroment variables in my config orm

Answer 1

There is a good documentation. If you want to dig into the source code - there is a class ConnectionOptionReader, which is looking for file ormconfig (with extensions env, js, cjs, ts, json, yml, yaml, xml) or for file .env. See the load function for more details.

1 So the easiest way is to add a line in your .env file, like this:

TYPEORM_URL=postgres://user:pass@host:port/dbname

Or use this sample. TypeORM will parse .env file using dotenv.
Here you can find all available env varibales.

2 If you read your .env file before TypeORM initialization, you can already use your env variables. For example in a Javascript file, instead ormconfig.json. Just export object like this from the file ormconfig.js:

module.exports = {
    "type": "postgres",
    "host": process.env.DB_HOST,
    "port": process.env.DB_PORT,
    "username": process.env.DB_USER,
    "password": process.env.DB_PASS,
    "database": process.env.DB_NAME,
    "synchronize": true,
    "logging": false,
    "entities": ["dist/src/entity/**/*.js"],
    "migrations": ["dist/src/migration/**/*.js"],
    "subscribers": ["dist/src/subscriber/**/*.js"],
    "cli": {
      "entitiesDir": "dist/src/entity",
      "migrationsDir": "dist/src/migration",
      "subscribersDir": "dist/src/subscriber"
    }
};

Another example