Using different PropertiesConfiguration for different environments like dev qa staging etc.

Large scale applications often need different properties when running on different environments. we can achieve this by passing arguments to NodeJs application and using same argument in node process to load specific environment property file.

Suppose we have two property files for different environment.

• dev.json

{
    PORT : 3000,
    DB : {
        host : "localhost",
        user : "bob",
        password : "12345"
    }
}

• qa.json

{
            PORT : 3001,
            DB : {
                host : "where_db_is_hosted",
                user : "bob",
                password : "54321"
            }
    }

Following code in application will export respective property file which we want to use.

Suppose the code is in environment.js

process.argv.forEach(function (val, index, array) {
    var arg = val.split("=");
    if (arg.length > 0) {
        if (arg[0] === 'env') {
            var env = require('./' + arg[1] + '.json');
            module.exports = env;
        }
    }
});

We give arguments to the application like following

node app.js env=dev

if we are using process manager like forever than it as simple as

forever start app.js env=dev

How to use the configuration file

var env= require("environment.js");