Environment Variables not loading to process.env in Nodejs

Question

I'm building out a nodejs api and have setup the dotenv package as a dev dependency to load the variables to process.env on developer's local machines.

Note that when I log in I use sudo -i to operate as root.

My intent is that during deployment, environment variables would be set in my Ubuntu host under /etc/environment, loaded directly in to the process, and then the app would just run for that configuration.

To do this, I have a line at the start of server.js:

if(process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development') {
    logger.info("Loading dotenv for development environment")
    require('dotenv').config();
}

And developers will be instructed to add an environment variable to their system for NODE_ENV.

Now, in my Ubuntu EC2 instance I've setup the /etc/environment to have the environment variables I want (note that NODE_ENV being 'dev' here is just to avoid running dotenv):

PORT=MYPORT
NODE_ENV=dev
APP_SECRET_KEY='MYSECRET'
APP_DATABASE_LOGIN=MYLOGIN
APP_DATABASE_PASSWORD='MYPASS'
APP_DATABASE_HOST=MYHOST
APP_DATABASE_NAME=MYDB
APP_DATABASE_PORT=MYDBPORT

And when I reboot and run printenv they are all populated per the file.

I have setup pm2 to run my application directly from server.js without any additional configuration because as I understand it, process.env is populated automatically from environment variables.

However, when I log the values from process.env, I just get null for everything:

logger.info({
    connectionConfig: {
        host: process.env.APP_DATABASE_HOST
        , login: process.env.APP_DATABASE_LOGIN
        , port: process.env.APP_DATABASE_PORT
        , databaseName: process.env.APP_DATABASE_NAME
    }
});

Is there something wrong with the configuration as-is here?

Note: Per the answer below, I had mistakenly setup my environment variables AFTER starting pm2, and as such pm2 caching was missing them

@MarcosCasagrande When I run npm start directly it loads the environment variables correctly but since PM2 is running and using the port already, it fails — C Bauer

Marcos Casagrande Marcos Casagrande · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-29T15:05:48

The issue is that pm2 caches the environment variables.

You have to do:

# all apps
pm2 restart all --update-env
# specific app
pm2 restart {pid} --update-env

If for some reason that doesn't work, the documented way is:

pm2 reload ecosystem.json --update-env

You can read more in here:

Environment Variables not loading to process.env in Nodejs

3 Answers