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Dotenv Vault

Dotenv Vault allows us to sync secrets between developer's machine and to deployments by storing an encrypted version of the secrets in the repo. This guide will walk you through setting up Dotenv Vault in the repo and deployments.

Prerequisites​

Make sure you have access to the Labrys Dotenv account, ask one of the senior devs if you don't and we can invite you.

Set up in Repo​

This repo is configured to use a single .env file at the root of the repo. There should already be a .env.example and .env.vault file. This .env.vault file is linked with the template repo deployment, so we want to remove it and set up a new one.

  1. Delete the existing .env.vault
  2. Create a new .env file based on .env.example
  3. Run npx dotenv-vault@latest new and press y to open the browser
  4. Give the project a name (match the Github repo name)
  5. Run npx dotenv-vault@latest login and press y to log in

Now if you make changes to your .env file you can push with:

npx dotenv-vault@latest push

and can pull with:

npx dotenv-vault@latest push

Managing Multiple Environments​

By default the above commands will pull the local environment. See the Dotenv Docs about managing multiple environments. Create a production and development environment before moving on to the next sections.

Deployment on Vercel​

Following the Dotenv Docs about deploying to Vercel has caused issues in the past. Try using the following instead.

The Next.JS app is automatically configured to use the DOTENV_KEY provided by Vercel's environment variables, all you need to do is set it.

Setting the DOTENV_KEYs​

  1. Run npx dotenv-vault@latest keys to get your keys
  2. Open Settings -> Environment Variables in your Vercel project
  3. Create a new environment variable with DOTENV_KEY as the key and the development key from the earlier command as the value. Set the Environments dropdown to just select Preview then hit save
  4. Do the same for the production DOTENV_KEY but set the Environments dropdown to just Production

Manually Setting the Build Command​

If you need to manually set the build command you can use:

cd ../../ && npx dotenv-vault@latest decrypt $DOTENV_KEY > .env && cd apps/nextjs && cp ../../.env .env && turbo run build

This command performs the following:

  1. Move to the root of the repo (where the .env.vault file is)
  2. Decrypt the .env.vault file into a .env file
  3. Move back to the nextjs directory
  4. Copy the .env file from the root to the nextjs directory (this allows us to use Next's build in .env file support)
  5. Run the build

This may need to be modified for your specific use case, e.g. if your .env.vault file is already in the nextjs directory then you wont need to move around and copy the file, just use the decrypt command:

npx dotenv-vault@latest decrypt $DOTENV_KEY > .env && turbo run build