DOTENV not reading variables properly

Question

This is my file:

postgresU="myuser"
postgresP="mypass"
postgresH="myhost"
postgresDB="mydb"
postgresC="postgres://${postgresU}:{$postgresP}@{$postgresH}:5432/${postgresDB}"

In my nodejs app,

require('dotenv').config();
var connectionString = process.env.postgresC;
console.log("Connection String:",connectionString);

This prints:

Connection String: "postgres://${postgresU}:${postgresP}@${postgresH}:5432/${postgresDB}"

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You can use a package like dotenv-expand if you want to expand variables in .evn files.

Once installed (with npm or yarn) you can simply use a .env file with:

postgresU="myuser"
postgresP="mypass"
postgresH="myhost"
postgresDB="mydb"
postgresC="postgres://${postgresU}:${postgresP}@${postgresH}:5432/${postgresDB}"

and then process it with:

const dotenv= require('dotenv')
const dotenvExpand = require('dotenv-expand')
let myEnv = dotenv.config()
dotenvExpand(myEnv)

let connectionString = process.env.postgresC;
console.log(connectionString)

postgres://myuser:mypass@myhost:5432/mydb