CI/CD in Node.js with CircleCI
Run Node.js CI/CD in CircleCI with an encrypted .env.vault file
Find a complete code example on GitHub for this guide.
Initial setup
Create a build.js
file. It's a very simple build script that outputs 'Hello World'.
build.js
// build.js
console.log(`Hello ${process.env.HELLO}`)
Create a package.json
file.
package.json
{
"scripts": {
"build": "node build.js"
}
}
Create a .circleci/config.yml
file.
.circleci/config.yml
# .circleci/config.yml
version: 2.1
orbs:
node: circleci/[email protected]
jobs:
build:
docker:
- image: cimg/base:2021.04
steps:
- checkout
- node/install
- node/install-packages
- run:
name: Run build
command: npm run build
Run npm install
to include the package-lock.json
file.
npm install
Commit all that to code and push to GitHub. Then connect your GitHub repo to CircleCI.
Once pushed, the CircleCI build will say 'Hello undefined'
as it doesn't have a way to access the environment variable yet. Let's do that next.
Install dotenv
Install dotenv
.
npm install dotenv --save # Requires dotenv >= 16.1.0
Create a .env
file in the root of your project.
.env
# .env
HELLO="World"
As early as possible in your application, import and configure dotenv.
build.js
// build.js
require('dotenv').config()
console.log(process.env) // remove this after you've confirmed it is working
console.log(`Hello ${process.env.HELLO}`)
Try running it locally.
node build.js
{
...
HELLO: 'World'
}
Hello World
Perfect. process.env
now has the keys and values you defined in your .env
file.
That covers local simulation of the CI. Let's solve for the real CI environment next.
Build .env.vault
Push your latest .env
file changes and edit your CI secrets. Learn more about syncing
npx dotenv-vault@latest push
npx dotenv-vault@latest open ci
Use the UI to configure those secrets per environment.
Then build your encrypted .env.vault
file.
npx dotenv-vault@latest build
Its contents should look something like this.
.env.vault
#/-------------------.env.vault---------------------/
#/ cloud-agnostic vaulting standard /
#/ [how it works](https://dotenv.org/env-vault) /
#/--------------------------------------------------/
# development
DOTENV_VAULT_DEVELOPMENT="/HqNgQWsf6Oh6XB9pI/CGkdgCe6d4/vWZHgP50RRoDTzkzPQk/xOaQs="
DOTENV_VAULT_DEVELOPMENT_VERSION=2
# ci
DOTENV_VAULT_CI="x26PuIKQ/xZ5eKrYomKngM+dO/9v1vxhwslE/zjHdg3l+H6q6PheB5GVDVIbZg=="
DOTENV_VAULT_CI_VERSION=2
Set DOTENV_KEY
Fetch your CI DOTENV_KEY
.
npx dotenv-vault@latest keys ci
# outputs: dotenv://:[email protected]/vault/.env.vault?environment=ci
Set DOTENV_KEY
on CircleCI.
Build CI
Commit those changes safely to code and rerun the build.
That's it! On rerun, your .env.vault
file will be decrypted and its CI secrets injected as environment variables – just in time.
It will say Hello ci
.
You'll know things worked correctly when you see 'Loading env from encrypted .env.vault'
in your logs. If a DOTENV_KEY
is not set (for example when developing on your local machine) it will fall back to standard dotenv functionality.
You succesfully used the new .env.vault standard to encrypt and deploy your secrets. This is much safer than scattering your secrets across multiple third-party platforms and tools. Whenever you need to add or change a secret, just rebuild your .env.vault file and redeploy.