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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:

SettingDescriptionTypeDefault value
STRAPI_DISABLE_UPDATE_NOTIFICATIONDon't show the notification message about updating strapi in the terminalBooleanfalse
STRAPI_HIDE_STARTUP_MESSAGEDon't show the startup message in the terminalBooleanfalse
STRAPI_TELEMETRY_DISABLEDDon't send telemetry usage data to StrapiBooleanfalse
STRAPI_LICENSEThe license key to activate the Enterprise EditionStringundefined
NODE_ENVType of environment where the application is running.

production enables specific behaviors (see Node.js documentation for details)
String'development'
BROWSEROpen the admin panel in the browser after startupBooleantrue
ENV_PATHPath to the file that contains your environment variablesString'./.env'
STRAPI_PLUGIN_I18N_INIT_LOCALE_CODE

Optional
Initialization locale for the application, if the Internationalization (i18n) plugin is installed and enabled on Content-Types (see Configuration of i18n in production environments)String'en'
FAST_REFRESHUse react-refresh to enable "Fast Refresh" for near-instant feedback while developing the Strapi admin panel.booleantrue

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:

./config/database.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
connections: {
default: {
settings: {
password: env('DATABASE_PASSWORD'),
},
},
},
});
note

The syntax property-name: env('VAR', 'default-value') uses the value stored in the .env file. If there is no specified value in the .env file the default value is used.

Casting environment variables

The env() utility can be used to cast environment variables 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]);

// Cast 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:

./config/server.js

module.exports = {
host: '127.0.0.1',
};
./config/env/production/server.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
host: env('HOST', '0.0.0.0'),
});

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 defined in .env. If not defined, uses 0.0.0.0
HOST=10.0.0.1 NODE_ENV=production yarn start # uses host 10.0.0.1