In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about environment variables — what they are, where you should keep them, and more!

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Show Notes

03:54 - What are they?

  • API Keys
  • Secrets
  • Database URLs
  • NODE_ENV

06:16 - Type of env variables

  • Plain text
  • Encrypted
  • Frontend
  • Backend
  • .env files
    • .env is a good package for all langs
    • .env.local
  • Framework env variables
  • System env variables
  • Host-provided variables

16:20 - Where should you keep them?

17:34 - Other gotchas

  • Netlify Limit is 4096
  • Netlify needs a clear cache before it works
  • THING=yo node index.js
  • cross-env
  • NODE_OPTIONS="–inspect"
  • Require before run
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