NestJs load environment variables on npm start

Question

There`sa more easy way to load your env vars using.env files.

Just add --require dotenv/config to your start script, like: node --require dotenv/config server.js . https://github.com/motdotla/dotenv

But, the problem is that this does not seems to work with nodemon and I can`t figure out how to do it. I tried:

 "start:dev": "nodemon --require dotenv/config",

Can someone help?

Answer 1

According to this GitHub issue , nodemon does not accept cli parameters for node. However, you can use this workaround to pass params:

nodemon --exec "node -r dotenv/config" index.js

You can put this in your npm start command by editing the package.json :

"start": "ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register -r dotenv/config src/main.ts",
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

If you want to use it in the start:dev command, edit the nodemon.json file:

"exec": "ts-node -r tsconfig-paths/register -r dotenv/config src/main.ts"
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Answer 2

if someone has reached here looking for a generic answer of how to set environment variables in nestjs then you got to read this official docs Nestjs Configuration