How to read env variables using Node repl

Question

How can I read environment variables from the node console? The steps I am doing are the following:

node

> process.env.PORT

> undefined

However, I have defined a PORT variable in a .env file. For context, I am working in an express project with the dotenv package included.

Answer 1

When I import .env vars I put 'require("dotenv").config();' in the root index file(for node). Also note that any vars in the .env file are capitalized. So if our var was COOL_PORT=443 we would access it via process.env.COOL_PORT.