Using environment variables

Astro uses Vite for environment variables, and allows you to use any of its methods to get and set environment variables. Note that all environment variables must be prefixed with PUBLIC_ to be accessible by client side code.

The ability to access private variables on the server side is still being discussed.

Setting environment variables

Vite includes dotenv by default, allowing you to easily set environment variables without any extra configuration in Astro projects. You can also attach a mode (either production or development) to the filename, like .env.production or .env.development, which makes the environment variables only take effect in that mode.

Just create a .env file in the project directory and add some variables to it.

# .env
PUBLIC_POKEAPI="https://pokeapi.co/api/v2"

Getting environment variables

Instead of using process.env, with Vite you use import.meta.env, which uses the import.meta feature added in ES2020 (don’t worry about browser support though, Vite replaces all import.meta.env mentions with static values). For example, to get the PUBLIC_POKEAPI environment variable, you could use import.meta.env.PUBLIC_POKEAPI.

fetch(`${import.meta.env.PUBLIC_POKEAPI}/pokemon/squirtle`);

⚠️WARNING⚠️: Because Vite statically replaces import.meta.env, you cannot access it with dynamic keys like import.meta.env[key].