You DON'T NEED Dotenv to Handle Environment Variables in Node.js Anymore!

[@FireGames25]

No need for nodemon, no need for dotenv... keeps getting better >:D

[@0x007A]

I learned about node --watch last week when I was looking for an alternative to nodemon.

[@cranberry888]

​@@0x007Areally? oh my... is it better in all ways than nodemon?

[@AnassSanba-f5d]

not really lol , that's just small changes nothing impressive

[@senthilmurugangsm]

oh.. really? nice!. can you pls help to share that video or reference link. thanks

[@michaelxaviercanonizado7931]

Thanks really helped! It also works with tsx when running a typescript file as a script in NextJS. Just add the same command: "tsx --env-file .env.local ${file path}"

[@Mnara016]

This is great thanks! Question I don’t use .env file locally, I add whatever variable I need in windows environment variables (for security reasons, don’t want to commit api keys or whatever by mistake) and simply call them in my apps using dotenv (process.env.someVariable). Is there a way to access these with some other flag such as the one you showed -env-file .env ? Thanks again for video

[@nitishsingh925]

vary help full video now i am using like that in package.json file "scripts": { "start": " nodemon --env-file .env ./index.js" }, any more way to do this then replay me any one 🙋‍♂🙋‍♂

[@twitchizle]

You dont need nodemon. Node has watch feature now

[@PeterVatler-hv6nf]

Thank you for the tip! I used NVM but it always messed up the packages when I wanted to update the versions. I started using scoop package manager which is awesome, you can use as many node version as you want, it handles their packages very well, it's really easy to update the versions. At work I use 18, 20 LTS and the latest 21. I ended up installing other developer tools like Git by scoop because it's much more easier to update than using a windows installer.

[@powertester5596]

A question: This works from command line (and thus in CI) but if I want to run a piece of code (say tests) from an IDE (such as VSCode), what would be required to load the env variables?

[@christopheanfry]

Thank you very useful also the nvm part as I was struggling between my node version with yarn it was always selecting the last one which I didn’t want. Thank you very good features 👍

[@rayusaki88]

Thanks James for this tip 👍🏻👍🏻

[@amadikesullivan2962]

I have a question. Looking at the folder structure, the .env is inside the the src folder with index.js. When you using the terminal to load the dotevn, is it absolute to write the file that needs the environment variables it in each case ? Or is something to be loaded once and the whole app starts using it ?

[@JohnMcclaned]

That cursor flashing animation is wild

[@everyhandletaken]

Still surprises me that this was not in Node since v1, but still, good to finally have it. Kinda wondering why the default behaviour isn't to pick up .env & the flag is only required if you want to using another filename.. i.e that is what dotenv has been doing all these years (though, I actually prefer env-var package, mostly)

[@otakugamingyt]

Still going to stick onto dotenv unless env files can be mentioned in package.json to load envs

[@booi_mangang]

If you are using ts, you would use ts-node. But I don't think ts-node support --watch or --watch-path

[@Cap10Chunks]

Definitely going to ditch dotenv now. Have you tried out Remix?

[@losVamonos]

Will an api key be exposed on the frontend using this method?

[@JamesQQuick]

Well, this concept is used for running locally. In production, you'd save API keys in environment variabels in your hosting provider which is safe.

[@losVamonos]

Saving environment variables and getting them to work is fairly easy on Netlify but not so easy on cheaper hosting platforms that use cPanel with the Node.js web application feature. This feature allows you to store environment variables. I'm still new to this but haven't had success getting it to work. I think a video on that would be very helpful. @@JamesQQuick

[@surendramaran]

not sure how can the production code will read the environment

[@JamesQQuick]

What do you mean?

[@surendramaran]

@@JamesQQuick I deploy my code at Azure web apps, and I declare my environment variables in the web app, I don't upload any .env file just the dotenv package read the environments automatically. I am not sure whether it will work there or not

[@surendramaran]

@@JamesQQuick I checked everything and now I just want to clear out that I didn't know that I don't need dotenv package if I already setup the environments variables on the cloud, so yeah now I can use what you told in the video easily. Thanks

[@JamesQQuick]

Yeah so your hosting provider should take care of environment variables when it's deployed. No need to send a .env file along!@@surendramaran

[@adarshchakraborty]

Can anyone tell me which theme & font is that

[@JamesQQuick]

"James Q Quick" theme and Cascadia Code font :)

[@egwuted2398]

How does your command prompt suggest stuff?

[@hrushikeshvibhute4639]

They are not suggestions, they are previously used commands

[@egwuted2398]

@@hrushikeshvibhute4639 they were suggestions not previous commands and I just got it working. you can check this out if you want to do it too kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJmpd6ZrodmBetU

[@neurabrain]

what is a font in vscode?

[@DxBlack]

Droid Sans Mono

[@haiderjaafer8164]

Is working in react front-end

[@someclipsilike7908]

yes

[@babyboie20]

Volta is also a really good nvm alternative.

[@111ramico]

NVM ls

[@shubhampatil5935]

Use typescript. You will realize why dotenv is needed. Make videos if you have proven solution for all usecases, instead of just gaining attraction.

[@krtirtho]

Just replace everything with Bun

[@samuelfalci]

@krtirtho show me a system writed in bun with milions of requests and users that handles tons of data, running in a production environment and qe start talking! Benchmark tests are not enough to replace a consolidated language to another one.

[@ThomazMartinez]

To long and feels overlay complicated explanation about this

[@JamesQQuick]

Thanks for the feedback. What would you change?

[@omomer3506]

​@JamesQQuick its perfectly fine, short and concise, showing a caveat that you ran into, i wouldn't change a thing

[@ThomazMartinez]

@@omomer3506 not short thats the point

[@polioann]

whaat

[@melodium10]

me who uses data.json file to handle data in my nodejs projekt😐

[@samuelluc132]

Environment variables have a different use case. They're for private data such as database passwords that you don't want to upload to GitHub by mistake.

[@melodium10]

@@samuelluc132 we can .gitignore it right?