ENVy

Handle your project environment properties from a simple .json file. Determine multiple environments and inherit properties between them.

Installation

To install simply use the node package manager (NPM):

[sudo] npm install envy

Motivation

There is no standard way of managing environment properties per project in node. With envy you can easily meet this need.

Typical use case

Define your configuration file

Create a .json file on your project root (where the package.json is located) this file is normally named config.json, for example:

{
  "environment": "development",

  "development": {
    "property": "Development property"
  },

  "production": {
    "property": "Production property"
  }
}

Use your properties in your program

The envy module is very easy to use, it only has function that loads the configuration file. Calling the load function with no parameters will try to load ./config.json:

var config = require("envy").load();

If your configuration file is named differently you can indicate it, remember file paths are relative to your project root and the file extension may be omitted:

var config = require("envy").load("./some-dir/filename");

or:

var config = require("envy").load("./some-dir/filename.json");

Execute your application

Imagine we have the following node application:

var config = require("envy").load("./some-dir/filename.json");
console.log(config.test);

Executing your application without setting the NODE_ENV environment variable will execute the program using the default properties in this case the "development" set will be selected.

$> node your-app.js
$> Development property
$>

If you want to select another environment you will need to set the NODE_ENV environment variable:

$> NODE_ENV=production node your-app.js
$> Production property
$>

File format

The file defines what is your default environment from which all other environments will inherit their properties.

In the following example the "development" environment will be selected by default. Selecting an environment in your configuration file will also make its properties to be inherited in the other environments. Continuing with the example, the "production" environment will also be configured to use the port 3000, but its database URL will be "mongodb://localhost/prod-app" instead of "mongodb://localhost/dev-app".

{
  "environment": "development",

  "development": {
    "port": 3000,
    "database": {
      "url": "mongodb://localhost/dev-app"
    }
  },

  "production": {
    "database": {
      "url": "mongodb://localhost/prod-app"
    }
  }
}

API

envy.load(filename)

Loads the properties defined on the provided file and returns the an object with the properties. If the NODE_ENV environment variable hasn't been defined then the selected set of properties will be defined by the "environment" property of the .json file.

• If no filename is provided, config.json will be loaded
• The filename is relative to the execution path: process.cwd()
• The file extension can be omitted