Access variables from the .env file in a Node.js application?

I'd use the dotenv NPM package. It makes things super easy!

Install it to your Node.js application:

npm install dotenv --save

Then, add this code to the entry file for your application (i.e. index.js):

const dotenv = require("dotenv")

dotenv.config()

Make sure the dotenv.config() line of code is added as early as possible in your application to make sure your code has access to the .env variables.

You should now be able to access the variables in your .env file via the process.env object:

process.env.PASSWORD

That will work globally across your application.