Environment Variables

Sometimes it is practical to have different config values according to the environment that the application is running in.

As an example:

// config/prod.env.js
module.exports = {
  NODE_ENV: '"production"',
  DEBUG_MODE: false,
  API_KEY: '"..."' // this is shared between all environments
}

// config/dev.env.js
module.exports = merge(prodEnv, {
  NODE_ENV: '"development"',
  DEBUG_MODE: true // this overrides the DEBUG_MODE value of prod.env
})

// config/test.env.js
module.exports = merge(devEnv, {
  NODE_ENV: '"testing"'
})

Note: string variables need to be wrapped into single and double quotes '"..."'

So, the environment variables are:

• Production
  • NODE_ENV = 'production',
  • DEBUG_MODE = false,
  • API_KEY = '...'
• Development
  • NODE_ENV = 'development',
  • DEBUG_MODE = true,
  • API_KEY = '...'
• Testing
  • NODE_ENV = 'testing',
  • DEBUG_MODE = true,
  • API_KEY = '...'

As we can see, test.env inherits the dev.env and the dev.env inherits the prod.env.

Usage

It is simple to use the environment variables in your code. For example:

Vue.config.productionTip = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production'