Node.JS/Express store DB config for different environment in JSON

Question

I'm running NodeJS Express app,

Currently have dev env, test env, and prod env.

However, the DB connection settings are in the code, is there a secure and best practice way to store DB config and all other configs in JSON file format by declaring them in a module (separately for each env or all in one module to be exported, maybe have a default.JSON, Dev.JSON, Prod.JSON...etc) for each environment then require them accordingly by setting the correct configuration for the correct environment in app.js.

I would like to achieve this without depending on any 3rd party package like .env or ncof.

Answer 1

Most of the main NodeJs hosting providers uses a simple environment variable. You can use this :

process.env.NODE_ENV

For defining it by yourself, for exemple 'development' on your local, you can do :

NODE_ENV=developpment node yourapp.js

With this, I suggest you to use a config tool, like nconf (there are some good competitors). You can do like this for example :

nconf
    .argv() // Takes arguments from CLI
    .file('./env.' + process.env.NODE_ENV + '.json') // takes from specific env file
    .file('package', './package.json'); // takes from package.json

Here priority is from the most important to the least : 1) argv 2) specific environment file 3) package.json

Answer 2

You can require file based on the environment.

const env = 'test';  // This value can be taken from config or .env
const configs = require(`../path/${env}`);
console.log('DB Config', configs.DB_PATH);

Depending on your environment you can load the file. And value for environment can be retrieved from .env or any other config.