How do I make a node app load variables from .env?

[luanc202]

I am testing some things with a custom node app for Cloudron, one of these tests is making my app load environment variables from my .env file, I've tried setting variables from cloudron cli and it worked, but for my application I really do need to load them from a file.

What I've tried:

Setting dotenv path manually in my server.js file as

require('dotenv').config({ path: '../data/.env' })

But did not work, also tried at the start.sh when node is called as

node -r dotenv/config your_script.js dotenv_config_path=../data/.env

Did not work either, my program was not able to load my file and when my code ran

console.log(process.env)

I was only getting the cloudron variables such as CLOUDRON_API_ORIGIN, PATH, CLOUDRON_APP_HOSTNAME,
CLOUDRON and many others.

So, my question is, how do I make my nodejs app load my environment variables from a .env file located in the /app/data folder? If that is even possible.

I tried searching for that here on the forum but I could not find an answer for that specific problem.

[luanc202]

Just solved it by adding

RUN ln -sf /app/data/env /app/code/.env

to my Dockerfile, my env is linked in the code folder and works as intended.

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