Exporting environment variables for local development and heroku deployment - bash

Question

I would like to setup some files for development, staging and production with environment variables, for example:
application_root/development.env
KEY1=value1
KEY2=value2
There would be similar files staging.env and production.env.
I am looking for a couple different bash scripts which would allow the loading of all these variables in either development or staging/production.
In local development I want to effectively run export KEY1=value1 for each line in the file.
For staging/production I will be deploying to Heroku and would like to effectively run heroku config:set -a herokuappname KEY1=value1 for each line in the staging or production.env files.
I know there are some gems designed for doing this but it seems like this might be pretty simple. I also like the flexibility of having the .env files as simple lists of keys and values and not specifically being tied to any language/framework. If I would have to change something about the way these variables need to be loaded it would be a matter of changing the script but not the .env files.

Answer 1

In the simplest form, you can load the key-value pairs into a bash array as follows:
IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -ra nameValuePairs < ./development.env
In Bash v4+, it's even simpler:
readarray -t nameValuePairs < ./development.env
You can then pass the resulting "${nameValuePairs[#]}" array to commands such as export or heroku config:set ...; e.g.:
export "${nameValuePairs[#]}"
Note, however, that the above only works as intended if the input *.env file meets all of the following criteria:
the keys are syntactically valid shell variable names and the lines have the form <key>=<value>, with no whitespace around =
the lines contain no quoting and no leading or trailing whitespace
there are no empty/blank lines or comment lines in the file.
the values are confined to a single line each.
A different approach is needed with files that do not adhere to this strict format; for instance, this related question deals with files that may contain quoted values.
Below is the source code for a bash script named load_env (the .sh suffix is generally not necessary and ambiguous):
You'd invoke it with the *.env file of interest, and it would perform the appropriate action (running heroku config:set … or export) based on the filename.
However, as stated, you must source the script (using source or its effective bash alias, .) in order to create environment variables (export) visible to the current shell.
To prevent obscure failures, the script complains if you pass a development.env file and have invoked the script without sourcing.
Examples:
./load_env ./staging.dev
. ./load_env ./development.dev # !! Note the need to source
load_env source code
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Helper function that keeps its aux. variables localized.
# Note that the function itself remains defined after sourced invocation, however.
configOrExport() {
local envFile=$1 doConfig=0 doExport=0 appName
case "$(basename "$envFile" '.env')" in
staging)
doConfig=1
# Set the desired app name here.
appName=stagingapp
;;
production)
doConfig=1
# Set the desired app name here.
appName=productionapp
;;
development)
doExport=1
;;
*)
echo "ERROR: Invalid or missing *.env file name: $(basename "$envFile" '.env')" >&2; exit 2
esac
# Make sure the file exists and is readable.
[[ -r "$envFile" ]] || { echo "ERROR: *.env file not found or not readable: $envFile" >&2; exit 2; }
# If variables must be exported, make sure the script is being sourced.
[[ $doExport -eq 1 && $0 == "$BASH_SOURCE" ]] && { echo "ERROR: To define environment variables, you must *source* this script." >&2; exit 2; }
# Read all key-value pairs from the *.env file into an array.
# Note: This assumes that:
# - the keys are syntactically valid shell variable names
# - the lines contain no quoting and no leading or trailing whitespace
# - there are no empty/blank lines or comment lines in the file.
IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -ra nameValuePairs < "$envFile"
# Run configuration command.
(( doConfig )) && { heroku config:set -a "$appName" "${nameValuePairs[#]}" || exit; }
# Export variables (define as environment variables).
(( doExport )) && { export "${nameValuePairs[#]}" || exit; }
}
# Invoke the helper function.
configOrExport "$#"