Define Environment Variables

Environment variables are global system variables accessible by all the processes running under the Operating System (OS). Environment variables are useful to store system-wide values such as the directories to search for executable programs (PATH), OS version, Network Information, and custom variables. These env variables are passed at build time and used at the runtime of an app.

Set Environment Variables

By default, Nx will load any environment variables you place in the following files:

1. apps/my-app/.env.[target-name].[target-configuration-name].local
2. apps/my-app/.env.[target-name].[target-configuration-name]
3. apps/my-app/.env.[target-name].local
4. apps/my-app/.env.[target-name]
5. apps/my-app/.[target-name].[target-configuration-name].local.env
6. apps/my-app/.[target-name].[target-configuration-name].env
7. apps/my-app/.[target-name].local.env
8. apps/my-app/.[target-name].env
9. apps/my-app/.env.local
10. apps/my-app/.local.env
11. apps/my-app/.env
12. .env.[target-name].[target-configuration-name].local
13. .env.[target-name].[target-configuration-name]
14. .env.[target-name].local
15. .env.[target-name]
16. .[target-name].[target-configuration-name].local.env
17. .[target-name].[target-configuration-name].env
18. .[target-name].local.env
19. .[target-name].env
20. .env.local
21. .local.env
22. .env

Order is important

Nx will move through the above list, ignoring files it can't find, and loading environment variables into the current process for the ones it can find. If it finds a variable that has already been loaded into the process, it will ignore it. It does this for two reasons:

1. Developers can't accidentally overwrite important system level variables (like NODE_ENV)
2. Allows developers to create .env.local or .local.env files for their local environment and override any project defaults set in .env
3. Allows developers to create target specific .env.[target-name] or .[target-name].env to overwrite environment variables for specific targets. For instance, you could increase the memory use for node processes only for build targets by setting NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=4096 in .build.env

For example:

1. apps/my-app/.env.local contains NX_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:3333
2. apps/my-app/.env contains NX_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://api.example.com
3. Nx will first load the variables from apps/my-app/.env.local into the process. When it tries to load the variables from apps/my-app/.env, it will notice that NX_PUBLIC_API_URL already exists, so it will ignore it.

We recommend nesting your app specific env files in apps/your-app, and creating workspace/root level env files for workspace-specific settings (like the Nx Cloud token).

Environment Variables for Configurations

Nx will only load environment variable files for a particular configuration if that configuration is defined for a task, even if you specify that configuration name from the command line. So if there is no development configuration defined for the app's build task, the following command will use .env.build instead of .env.build.development:

nx build app --configuration development

In order to have Nx actually use the .env.build.development environment variables, the development configuration needs to be set for the task (even if it is empty).

apps/app/project.json

{
  "targets": {
    "build": {
      // ...
      "configurations": {
        "development": {}
      }
    }
  }
}

Point to Custom Env Files

If you want to load variables from env files other than the ones listed above:

1. Use the env-cmd package: env-cmd -f .qa.env nx serve
2. Use dotenvx: dotenvx run --env-file=.qa.env -- nx serve
3. Use the envFile option of the run-commands builder and execute your command inside of the builder

Ad-hoc Variables

You can also define environment variables in an ad-hoc manner using support from your OS and shell.

Unix systems

In Unix systems, we need to set the environment variables before calling a command.

Let's say that we want to define an API URL for the application to use:

NX_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:3333 nx build myapp

Windows (cmd.exe)

set "NX_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:3333" && nx build myapp

Windows (Powershell)

($env:NX_PUBLIC_API_URL = "http://localhost:3333") -and (nx build myapp)