dotenv file is not loading environment variables

Question

I have .env file at root folder file

NODE_ENV=development
NODE_HOST=localhost
NODE_PORT=4000
NODE_HTTPS=false
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USERNAME=user
DB_PASSWORD=user

And server.js file in the root/app/config/server.js folder. The first line of server.js file is

require('dotenv').config();

I also tried following:

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

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

However, my env variable are not loaded when I run the server.js file from command prompt

node root/app/config/server.js

If I use the visual studio and press F5, it loads!!

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, what I'm missing. Any suggestion is highly appreciate. Thanks.

Answer 1

How about use require('dotenv').config({path:__dirname+'/./../../.env'}) ?

Your problem seems to be the execution path.

Answer 2

This solved my issues in Node v8.14.1:

const path = require('path')
require('dotenv').config({ path: path.resolve(__dirname, '../.env') })

Simply doing require('dotenv').config({path:__dirname+'/./../../.env'}) resulted in a location that resolved as /some/path/to/env/./../../.env

Answer 3

Here is a single-line solution:

require('dotenv').config({ path: require('find-config')('.env') })

This will recurse parent directories until it finds a .env file to use.

You can also alternatively use this module called ckey inspired from one-liner above.

.env file from main directory.

# dotenv sample content
[email protected]
PASSWORD=iampassword123
API_KEY=1234567890

some js file from sub-directory

const ck = require('ckey');

const userName = ck.USER;     // [email protected]
const password = ck.PASSWORD; // iampassword123
const apiKey   = ck.API_KEY;  // 1234567890

Answer 4

If you are invoking dotenv from a nested file, and your .env file is at the project root, the way you want to connect the dots is via the following:

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

Answer 5

I've had this problem and it turned out that REACT only loads variables prefixed with REACT_APP_

VueJs can have a similar issue as it expects variables to be prefixed with: VUE_APP_

Answer 6

In the remote case that you arrive till this point, my issue was quite dumber: I wrongly named my env variables with colon ":" instead of equals "=". Rookie mistake but the resulting behavior was not loading the misspelled variables assignment.

# dotenv sample content

# correct assignment
[email protected]

# wrong assignment (will not load env var)
USER : [email protected]

Answer 7

This solved the issue for me:

const path = require('path');
require('dotenv').config({
  path: path.resolve('config.env'),
});

Answer 8

Try this:

const dotenv = require('dotenv');
dotenv.config({ path: process.cwd() + '/config/config.env' });

worked for me idk how??

Answer 9

In my case .env was read fine, but not .env.local.

Updating package.json to name .env into .env.local ( cp ./.env.local .env) solved the problem:

  "myscript": "cp ./.env.local .env && node ./scripts/myscript.js"

Answer 10

One time I have got the same problem. Dotenv did not load .env file. I tried to fix this problem with a path config, to put .env file in a root folder, to put .env in the folder where the file is running and nothing helps me. Then I just trashed Node_modules folder, reinstall all dependencies and it works correctly

Answer 11

One of the comments in @DavidP's answer notes logging the output of dotenv.config with console.log(require("dotenv").config()). This will output a log of the config and display errors. In my case it indicated the config method was referencing the current directory instead of the parent directory which contained my .env file. I was able to reference that with the following

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

Answer 12

Just add

require("dotenv").config();

to the index of your app, it will locate your .env file, you can then use process.env.YOUR_ENV anywhere in your code