Dotenv

Dotenv is a application to load your dotenv files from current working directory into environment and provide environment variables to other programs.

The software was designed to help load environment variables in Rails applications, but is not limited to Rails.

Examples:

Add environment variables in the .env files of your project

touch .env
touch .env.test
touch .env.development
touch .env.preview
touch .env.staging
touch .env.production
touch .env.local
touch .env.test.local
touch .env.development.local
touch .env.preview.local
touch .env.staging.local
touch .env.production.local

Run your software

dotenv env
dotenv test bundle exec rspec
dotenv bundle exec rails s
dotenv exec env
dotenv -f my_custom_env_file exec env
dotenv -f my_custom_env_file env

Requirements

Ruby (Tested on 2.5.1)

Setup

The setup is as simple as downloading the binary

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andrzejtrzaska/dotenv/master/dotenv
chmod +x dotenv
./dotenv

Ideally you should add dotenv to your PATH environment variable or move it to some location in PATH. That will make using the program a lot easier.

You can also create some aliases to avoid typing dotenv every time.

alias be='dotenv bundle exec'
alias dot=dotenv

Environment integrations

Dotenv uses RAILS_ENV or ENV environment variable to load correct environment file.

For example for RAILS_ENV=development or ENV=development it will load in order:

.env
.env.development
.env.local
.env.development.local

Default environment is development.

Notes

Override environment variables

Unlike normal dotenv, it is possible to override already set environment variables.

Comments

It is possible to comment out some environment variables in dotfiles. To comment out a variable, use the # character:

# NODE_ENV=development

Exports

To provide copy paste support from shell scripts, export keywords will be ignored, when reading dotenv files.

With that said, both versions of following environment variable definition will work just fine:

Dotenv syntax

NODE_ENV=development
Shell export syntax

export NODE_ENV=development

Licence

MIT

atrzaska / dotenv