# Environment configuration and variables
Strapi provides environment variables that can be used in configuration files. An env()
utility can be used to retrieve the value of environment variables and cast variables to different types, and specific configurations for different environments can be created.
# Strapi's environment variables
Strapi provides the following environment variables:
Setting | Description | Type | Default value |
---|---|---|---|
STRAPI_DISABLE_UPDATE_NOTIFICATION | Don't show the notification message about updating strapi in the terminal | Boolean | false |
STRAPI_HIDE_STARTUP_MESSAGE | Don't show the startup message in the terminal | Boolean | false |
STRAPI_TELEMETRY_DISABLED | Don't send telemetry usage data to Strapi | Boolean | false |
STRAPI_LICENSE | The license key to activate the Enterprise Edition | String | undefined |
NODE_ENV | Type of environment where the app is running | String | 'development' |
BROWSER | Open the admin panel in the browser after startup | Boolean | true |
ENV_PATH | Path to the file that contains your environment variables | String | './.env' |
STRAPI_PLUGIN_I18N_INIT_LOCALE_CODE Optional | Initialization locale for the app, if the Internationalization (i18n) plugin is installed and enabled on Content-Types (see Configuration of i18n in production environments) | String | 'en' |
API_TOKEN_SALT Optional | Salt to use to generate API tokens | String | - |
# Configuration using environment variables
In most use cases there will be different configurations between environments (e.g. database credentials).
Instead of writing those credentials into configuration files, variables can be defined in a .env
file at the root of the application:
# path: .env
DATABASE_PASSWORD=acme
To customize the path of the .env
file to load, set an environment variable called ENV_PATH
before starting the application:
$ ENV_PATH=/absolute/path/to/.env npm run start
Variables defined in the .env
file are accessible using process.env.{variableName}
anywhere in configuration and application files.
In configuration files, a env()
utility allows defining defaults and casting values:
# Casting environment variables
The env()
utility can be used to cast environment varibles to different types:
// Returns the env if defined without casting it
env('VAR', 'default');
// Cast to integer (using parseInt)
env.int('VAR', 0);
// Cast to float (using parseFloat)
env.float('VAR', 3.14);
// Cast to boolean (check if the value is equal to 'true')
env.bool('VAR', true);
// Cast to JS object (using JSON.parse)
env.json('VAR', { key: 'value' });
// Cast to array (syntax: ENV_VAR=[value1, value2, value3] | ENV_VAR=["value1", "value2", "value3"])
env.array('VAR', [1, 2, 3]);
// Case to date (using new Date(value))
env.date('VAR', new Date());
# Environment configurations
Configurations can be created with the following naming and structure conventions: ./config/env/{environment}/{filename}
. This is useful when you need specific static configurations for specific environments and using environment variables is not the best solution.
These configurations will be merged into the base configurations defined in the ./config
folder.
The environment is based on the NODE_ENV
environment variable, which defaults to development
.
When starting Strapi with NODE_ENV=production
it will load the configuration from ./config/*
and ./config/env/production/*
. Everything defined in the production configuration will override the default configuration. In combination with environment variables this pattern becomes really powerful.
For instance, using the following configuration files will give you various options to start the server:
With these configuration files the server will start on various ports depending on the environment variables passed:
yarn start # uses host 127.0.0.1
NODE_ENV=production yarn start # uses host 0.0.0.0
HOST=10.0.0.1 NODE_ENV=production yarn start # uses host 10.0.0.1
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