# dotenv Automatically load your project ENV variables from `.env` file when you `cd` into project root directory. Storing configuration in the environment is one of the tenets of a [twelve-factor app](https://www.12factor.net). Anything that is likely to change between deployment environments, such as resource handles for databases or credentials for external services, should be extracted from the code into environment variables. ## Installation Just add the plugin to your `.zshrc`: ```sh plugins=(... dotenv) ``` ## Usage Create `.env` file inside your project root directory and put your ENV variables there. For example: ```sh export AWS_S3_TOKEN=d84a83539134f28f412c652b09f9f98eff96c9a export SECRET_KEY=7c6c72d959416d5aa368a409362ec6e2ac90d7f export MONGO_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017 export PORT=3001 ``` `export` is optional. This format works as well: ```sh AWS_S3_TOKEN=d84a83539134f28f412c652b09f9f98eff96c9a SECRET_KEY=7c6c72d959416d5aa368a409362ec6e2ac90d7f MONGO_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017 PORT=3001 ``` You can even mix both formats, although it's probably a bad idea. ## Version Control **It's strongly recommended to add `.env` file to `.gitignore`**, because usually it contains sensitive information such as your credentials, secret keys, passwords etc. You don't want to commit this file, it's supposed to be local only. ## Disclaimer This plugin only sources the `.env` file. Nothing less, nothing more. It doesn't do any checks. It's designed to be the fastest and simplest option. You're responsible for the `.env` file content. You can put some code (or weird symbols) there, but do it on your own risk. `dotenv` is the basic tool, yet it does the job. If you need more advanced and feature-rich ENV management, check out these awesome projects: * [direnv](https://github.com/direnv/direnv) * [zsh-autoenv](https://github.com/Tarrasch/zsh-autoenv)