Dotenvy behaviour (Dotenvy v1.1.0)
View SourceDotenvy
is an Elixir port of the original dotenv Ruby gem.
It is designed to help applications follow the principles of the 12-factor app and its recommendation to store configuration in the environment.
Unlike other configuration helpers, Dotenvy
enforces no convention for the naming
of your files: .env
is a common choice, you may name your configuration files whatever
you wish.
See the Getting Started page for more info.
Summary
Types
An input source may be either a path to an env file or a map with string keys
and values, e.g. "envs/.env"
or %{"FOO" => "bar"}
. This allows users to
specify a list of env files interspersed with other values from other sources,
most commonly System.get_env()
.
Callbacks
A parser implementation should receive the contents
read from a file,
a map of vars
(with string keys, as would come from System.get_env/0
),
and a keyword list of opts
.
Types
An input source may be either a path to an env file or a map with string keys
and values, e.g. "envs/.env"
or %{"FOO" => "bar"}
. This allows users to
specify a list of env files interspersed with other values from other sources,
most commonly System.get_env()
.
Callbacks
@callback parse(contents :: binary(), vars :: map(), opts :: keyword()) :: {:ok, map()} | {:error, any()}
A parser implementation should receive the contents
read from a file,
a map of vars
(with string keys, as would come from System.get_env/0
),
and a keyword list of opts
.
See Dotenvy.Parser
for the default implementation of this callback.
Functions
@spec env!(variable :: binary(), type :: Dotenvy.Transformer.conversion_type()) :: any() | no_return()
Reads the given env variable
and converts its value to the given type
.
This function attempts to read a value from a local data store of sourced values.
This function may raise an error because type conversion is delegated to
Dotenvy.Transformer.to!/2
-- see its documentation for a list of supported types.
Examples
iex> env!("PORT", :integer)
5432
iex> env!("ENABLED", :boolean)
true
@spec env!( variable :: binary(), type :: Dotenvy.Transformer.conversion_type(), default :: any() ) :: any() | no_return()
Reads an env variable and converts its output or returns a default value.
Use env!/2
when possible
env!/2
is recommended over env!/3
because it creates a stronger contract with
the environment: your app literally will not start when required env variables are missing.
If the given variable
is set, its value is converted to the given type
.
The provided default
value is only used when the variable is not set
(i.e. when it does not exist).
The default
value is returned as-is, without conversion. This allows
greater control of the output.
Conversion is delegated to Dotenvy.Transformer.to!/2
, which may raise an error.
See its documentation for a list of supported types.
This function attempts to read a value from a local data store of sourced values.
Examples
iex> env!("PORT", :integer, 5432)
5433
iex> env!("NOT_SET", :boolean, %{not: "converted"})
%{not: "converted"}
iex> System.put_env("HOST", "")
iex> env!("HOST", :string!, "localhost")
** (RuntimeError) Error converting HOST to string!: non-empty value required
@spec source(inputs :: input_source() | [input_source()], opts :: keyword()) :: {:ok, %{optional(String.t()) => String.t()}} | {:error, any()}
Like its Bash namesake command, source/2
accumulates values from the given input(s).
The accumulated values are stored via a side effect function to make them available
to the env!/2
and env!/3
functions.
Think of source/2
as a merging operation which can accept maps (like Map.merge/2
)
or paths to env files.
Inputs are processed from left to right so that values can be overridden by each
subsequent input. As with Map.merge/2
, the right-most input takes precedence.
Options
:parser
module that implements theDotenvy.parse/3
callback. Default:Dotenvy.Parser
:require_files
specifies which of the givenfiles
(if any) must be present. Whentrue
, all the listed files must exist. Whenfalse
, none of the listed files must exist. When some of the files are required and some are optional, provide a list specifying which files are required. If a file listed here is not included in the function'sfiles
argument, it is ignored. Default:false
:side_effect
an arity 1 function called after successfully parsing inputs. The default is an internal function that stores the values inside a process dictionary so the values are available to theenv!/2
andenv!/3
functions. This option is overridable to facilitate testing. Changing it is not recommended.
All other options are passed through to Dotenvy.Parser.parse/3
, e.g. :sys_cmd_fn
.
Examples
The simplest implementation is to parse a single file by including its path:
iex> Dotenvy.source(".env")
{:ok, %{
"TIMEOUT" => "5000",
"DATABASE_URL" => "postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost/myapp",
# ...etc...
}
}
More commonly, you will source multiple files (often based on the config_env()
)
and you will defer to pre-existing system variables. The most common pattern looks like this:
iex> Dotenvy.source([
"#{config_env()}.env",
"#{config_env()}.override.env",
System.get_env()
])
In the above example, the prod.env
, dev.env
, and test.env
files would be version-controlled,
but the *.override.env
variants would be ignored, giving developers the ability to override
values without needing to modify versioned files.
Give Precedence to System Envs!
Don't forget to include System.get_env()
as the final input to source/2
so that
system environment variables take precedence over values sourced from .env
files.
When you run a shell command like ❯ LOG_LEVEL=debug mix run
, your expectation is probably that
the LOG_LEVEL
variable would be set to debug
, overriding whatever may have been defined
in your sourced .env
files. Similarly, you may export env vars in your Bash profile.
System env vars are not granted precedence automatically: you must explicitly include
System.get_env()
as the final input to source/2
.
If your env files are making use of variable substitution based on system env vars,
e.g. ${PWD}
(see the Dotenv File Format), then you
would need to specify System.get_env()
as the first argument to source/2
.
For example, if your .env
references the system HOME
variable:
# .env
CACHE_DIR=${HOME}/cache
then your source/2
command would need to make the system env vars available
to the parser by including them as one of the inputs, e.g.
iex> Dotenvy.source([System.get_env(), ".env"])
In some cases, you may wish to reference the system vars both before and after your own .env files, e.g.
iex> Dotenvy.source([System.get_env(), ".env", System.get_env()])
or you may wish to cherry-pick which variables you need to make available for variable substitution:
iex> Dotenvy.source([
%{"HOME" => System.get_env("HOME")},
".env",
System.get_env()
])
This syntax favors explicitness so there is no confusion over what might have been "automagically" accumulated.
If you need to make any variables parsed from your files available elsewhere in
the application via System.get_env/2
, then you can call System.put_env/1
on
the output of Dotenvy.source/2
, e.g.
iex> {:ok, parsed_vars} = Dotenvy.source([".env", System.get_env()])
iex> System.put_env(parsed_vars)
@spec source!(files :: binary() | [binary()], opts :: keyword()) :: %{optional(String.t()) => String.t()} | no_return()
As source/2
, but returns a map on success or raises on error.