What will you write to add the .env file to your express application?

To add the .env file to your Express application, follow these steps:

  1. Install the dotenv package by running the following command in your terminal:
npm install dotenv

  1. Create a new file in the root directory of your Express application and name it ".env". This file will store your environment variables.

  2. Open the .env file and add your environment variables in the format of KEY=VALUE. For example:

DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=root
DB_PASSWORD=secret123
  1. In the main file of your Express application (usually app.js or index.js), require the dotenv package and call the config() method. This will load the environment variables from the .env file into the process.env object. Add the following code at the top of your file:
require('dotenv').config();
  1. Now you can access the environment variables in your application using process.env.VARIABLE_NAME. For example, to access the DB_HOST variable from the .env file, you can use:
const dbHost = process.env.DB_HOST;

By following these steps, you have successfully added the .env file to your Express application. This allows you to store sensitive information, such as database credentials or API keys, in a separate file and easily access them throughout your application.