How to store an object in process.env variables

Question

I'm using firebase in my node js. application, and I want to store its serviceAccountKey.json file in a process.env variable.

Something like this in my dotenv (.env) file

  SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY={
  "type": "anything",
  "project_id": "anything",
  "private_key_id": "anything",
  "private_key": "anything",
  "client_email": "anything",
  "client_id": "anything",
  "auth_uri": "anything",
  "token_uri": "anything",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "anything",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "anything"
}

But when I do this, It says

Service account must be an object.

Please help me storing this object in process.env variable.

Answer 1

You could try to store the object as a string and parse it as JSON in your code.

.env :

MY_VAR='{"a":"valueA","b":"valueB"}'

Then in the code
app.js :

let object = JSON.parse(process.env.MY_VAR);

EDIT ( thanks @Luca Galasso ) Reformed a correct JSON string.

Answer 2

When storing a variable in the process.env , it will be automatically converted as a string.

Given that, if you'd like to set a variable in the process.env , either you pass a proper string object-like while running your script:

SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY='{"type":"anything"}' node script.js

or you cast the object to a string in your script.js file like:

process.env.SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY = JSON.parse(SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY)

In both cases, while reading your variable from the process.env, you should convert it to an object:

SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY = JSON.parse(process.env.SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY)

---

Since the error you wrote says "... must be an object.", most probably the missing piece is the last step (parsing from string to object).