This module allows you to parse and validate configuration variables.

Define an schema

const url = require('url');
const xenv = require('xenv');

const schema = {
  MONGODB: {
    required: true
  },
  RABBITMQ: {
    required: true,
    parse: url.parse
  },
  PORT: {
    default: 9000,
    parse: parseInt,
    validate: port => port > 1000
  },
  BLOCKED: {
    default: [],
    parse: blocked => blocked.split(',')
  }
};

const env = xenv({ schema }, process.env);

console.dir(env);

Then running:

MONGODB=mongodb://localhost/test \
  RABBITMQ=amqp://user:pass@localhost/test \
  PORT=9000 \
  BLOCKED=foo,bar \
  node test.js

Will print:

{
  MONGODB: 'mongodb://localhost/test',
  RABBITMQ: {
    protocol: 'amqp:',
    auth: 'user:pass',
    host: 'localhost',
    hostname: 'localhost',
    path: '/test'
  },
  PORT: 9000,
  BLOCKED: ['foo', 'bar']
}

Running throws an exception:

node test.js

The required environment variable MONGODB has not been defined.

Common techniques

xenv is an attempt to create an human readable DSL for configuration. Given than some patterns often repeat I have included some templates.

Example:

PORT: {
  parse: parseInt,
  default: 9000
},
BLOCKED: {
  default: [],
  parse: blocked => blocked.split(','),
  validate: v => Array.isArray(v)
},
LOG_LEVEL: {
  default: 'debug',
  validate: level => ['error', 'info', 'debug'].indexOf(level) > -1
}

Can be written as follows:

PORT: {
  type: 'int'
  default: 9000
},
BLOCKED: {
  type: 'arrayOfStrings'
},
LOG_LEVEL: {
  type: 'string',
  default: 'debug',
  oneOf: ['error', 'info', 'debug']
}

To parse or not to parse

xenv will attempt to parse the value of a variable only if the value is an string. The idea is that you can combine environment variables with other source of configurations.

Example:

const fs = require('fs');
const configFromFile = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(process.env.CONFIG_FILE, 'utf8'));
const rawConfig = _.extend({}, configFromFile, process.env);
const config = xenv(schema, rawConfig);

In this case is possible that the configuration sourced from the JSON file is already parsed while settings coming from environment variables have some type of encoding.

Imagine you have a BLOCKED variable like the one shown before (type: 'arrayOfStrings'). If xenv receives an string it will do value.split(',') but if the variable is an array then it will not try to parse it.

License

MIT 2017 - José F. Romaniello