How to store Node.js deployment settings/configuration files?

I use a package.json for my packages and a config.js for my configuration, which looks like:

var config = {};

config.twitter = {};
config.redis = {};
config.web = {};

config.default_stuff =  ['red','green','blue','apple','yellow','orange','politics'];
config.twitter.user_name = process.env.TWITTER_USER || 'username';
config.twitter.password=  process.env.TWITTER_PASSWORD || 'password';
config.redis.uri = process.env.DUOSTACK_DB_REDIS;
config.redis.host = 'hostname';
config.redis.port = 6379;
config.web.port = process.env.WEB_PORT || 9980;

module.exports = config;

I load the config from my project:

var config = require('./config');

and then I can access my things from config.db_host, config.db_port, etc... This lets me either use hardcoded parameters, or parameters stored in environmental variables if I don't want to store passwords in source control.

I also generate a package.json and insert a dependencies section:

"dependencies": {
  "cradle": "0.5.5",
  "jade": "0.10.4",
  "redis": "0.5.11",
  "socket.io": "0.6.16",
  "twitter-node": "0.0.2",
  "express": "2.2.0"
}

When I clone the project to my local machine, I run npm install to install the packages. More info on that here.

The project is stored in GitHub, with remotes added for my production server.

You can require JSON files as of Node v0.5.x (referencing this answer)

config.json:

{
    "username" : "root",
    "password" : "foot"
}

app.js:

var config = require('./config.json');
log_in(config.username, config.password);

Much later, I found a pretty good Node.js module for managing configuration: nconf.

A simple example:

var nconf = require('nconf');

// First consider commandline arguments and environment variables, respectively.
nconf.argv().env();

// Then load configuration from a designated file.
nconf.file({ file: 'config.json' });

// Provide default values for settings not provided above.
nconf.defaults({
    'http': {
        'port': 1337
    }
});

// Once this is in place, you can just use nconf.get to get your settings.
// So this would configure `myApp` to listen on port 1337 if the port
// has not been overridden by any of the three configuration inputs
// mentioned above.
myApp.listen(nconf.get('http:port'));

It also supports storing settings in Redis, writing configuration files, and has a fairly solid API, and is also backed by one of the more well-respected Node.js shops, Nodejitsu, as part of the Flatiron framework initiative, so it should be fairly future-proof.

Check out nconf at Github.

My solution is fairly simple:

Load the environment config in ./config/index.js

var env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development'
  , cfg = require('./config.'+env);

module.exports = cfg;

Define some defaults in ./config/config.global.js

var config = module.exports = {};

config.env = 'development';
config.hostname = 'dev.example.com';

//mongo database
config.mongo = {};
config.mongo.uri = process.env.MONGO_URI || 'localhost';
config.mongo.db = 'example_dev';

Override the defaults in ./config/config.test.js

var config = require('./config.global');

config.env = 'test';
config.hostname = 'test.example';
config.mongo.db = 'example_test';

module.exports = config;

Using it in ./models/user.js:

var mongoose = require('mongoose')
, cfg = require('../config')
, db = mongoose.createConnection(cfg.mongo.uri, cfg.mongo.db);

Running your app in test environment:

NODE_ENV=test node ./app.js

How to store Node.js deployment settings/configuration files?

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