Dotenv: Asking for learning purposes: Why use this?

[goldbergyoni]

Hey, asking humbly for learning purposes: why copy something that already exists in the code to a source outside of the code? The whole idea of process env var is for *external people (e.g. devops) to inject values from the *outside to the *inside because they have no access to the code or to modify during runtime. Why is there a need to copy from the inside (where things really matter) to the outside? Is the purpose to show devops/system folks the defaults and the various env var options? Thanks for clarifying

[maxbeatty]

I would encourage you to read Twelve-Factor App on Config and Environment Variables in Node.js.

why copy something that already exists in the code to a source outside of the code?

Security mostly. Sending your production database password that's in your source code to every developer on your team and GitHub.com leaves a lot of opportunity for the wrong people to get it.

[goldbergyoni]

But...

You instruct to "Create a .env file in the root directory of your project" so the keys and secrets are actually within the code. What do I miss here?

[zenflow]

@i0natan You should add that file to your .gitignore