Your env variables are dependencies. Treat them as such.

npm install require-env --save

(--save automatically updates your package.json file - tell your friends)

var env = require('require-env'),
    foo = env.require('FOO');

If there's a FOO variable in your app's environment, ie process.env.FOO, then foo is set. If not, then an exception is thrown and your app will crash.

This mirrors the behavior of the node.js require method which will crash if the given module is not found. This is especially useful on services such as Heroku which store database connection info in environment variables. If you don't have the URL for a database you require, better to crash now than to crash somewhere inside someone else's connect method.

This module also contains some convenience functions for dealing with environment variables in node:

returns true if process.env[name] exists and is not undefined.

Synchronously loads environment variables of the form KEY=VALUE from the given file and adds them to process.env. Useful for running tests with different environment variables. Understands comments (lines beginning with #). Does not crash if the file is missing (just prints a warning). Written with Foreman's .env files in mind.

returns the environment variable with the given name if it exists and is not undefined. Throws an Error if otherwise.

Runs url.parse on the variable with the given name, parses user and pass variables from any resulting auth info and parses any resulting port into an int. Written with RedisToGo URLs in mind.

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2011-2012 Bloom Studio, Inc.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.