Is it possible to use dotenv in a react project?
The short answer is no. A browser cannot access local or server environment variables so dotenv has nothing to look for. Instead, you specify ordinary variables in your React application, usually in a settings module.
Webpack can be made to take environment variables from the build machine and bake them into your settings files. However, it works be actually replacing strings at build-time, not run-time. So each build of your application will have the values hard-coded into it. These values would then be accessible through the process.env object.
var nodeEnv = process.env.NODE_ENV;
Additionally, you could use the DefinePlugin for webpack which lets you explicitly specify different values depending on your build target (dev, prod, etc.). Note that you have to JSON.stringify all values passed into it.
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development')
}),
This is fine for any sort of public details but should never be used for any sort of private keys, passwords or API secrets. This is because any values baked in are publicly accessible and could be used maliciously if they contain sensitive details. For those sorts of things, you need to write some server-side code and build a simple API which can authenticate with the 3rd party API using the secrets, then pass the relevant details along to your client-side application. Your server-side API acts as an intermediary, protecting your secrets while still getting the data you need.
Sorry for picking up old question, but
react-scripts actually uses dotenv library under the hood.
With [email protected] and higher, you can work with environment variables this way:
- create .env file in the root of the project
- set environment variables starting with REACT_APP_ there
- access it by process.env.REACT_APP_... in components
.env
REACT_APP_BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000
App.js
const BASE_URL = process.env.REACT_APP_BASE_URL;
See docs for more details.