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Integrations
Gatsby with Node.js
Learn how to make Gatsby, Node.js, and Dotenv Vault work together in a simple web app. This tutorial assumes you are already familiar with .env files and know how to sync them.
You can find a complete example repo here.
Initial setup
Start with an existing Gatsby setup or use one of the site templates available on the platform.
Package installation
Move forward by installing the dotenv package with npm.
CLI
npm install dotenv --save
Add a reference for the dotenv package as early as possible within the gatsby-config.js file, just before the module_exports call.
React
// gatsby-config.js
require('dotenv').config()
console.log(process.env) // for debugging purposes. remove when ready.
module.exports = {
...
}
Build the Vault
Make sure you are logged in and in sync with your Vault first then run npx dotenv-vault build from CLI in your project root.
This will build an encrypted .env.vault file that serves as a unique identifier for your project in Dotenv.
Inside it you will find the public keys for every environment you have setup and must be committed to source.
CLI
npx dotenv-vault build
Fetch the keys
With the Vault successfully built, you now can fetch the .env.vault decryption keys for each environment in the Vault project.
Running npx dotenv-vault keys production, for example, will return the production key and so will development and ci respectively.
CLI
npx dotenv-vault keys production
remote: Listing .env.vault decryption keys... done
dotenv://:[email protected]/vault/.env.vault?environment=production
Set deployment
Now that you have access to the keys for every environment, you will have to reference them as environment variables in your Gatsby project’s settings.
To do that, navigate to your Project, then the Site Settings tab to reach the Environment variables panel.
Set as key DOTENV_KEY and as value the decryption key returned in the previous step dotenv://:[email protected]/vault/.env.vault?environment=production.
Commit and push
That’s it!
Commit those changes safely to code and deploy to Gatsby.
When the build runs, it will recognize the DOTENV_KEY, decrypt the .env.vault file, and load the production environment variables to ENV.
If a DOTENV_KEY is not set when developing on local machine, for example, it will fall back to standard Dotenv functionality.
You’ll know things worked correctly when you see 'Loading .env from encrypted .env.vault' in your Gatsby logs.
