Not working with dotenv

I can’t seem to get debug working with dotenv. It works fine when I set the env var from outside of .env like so:

package.json

"dev": "NODE_ENV=development DEBUG=*,apicache nodemon",

npm run dev

server.js

import 'babel-polyfill';
import makeDebug from 'debug';
import dotenv from 'dotenv';

const env = dotenv.config();
console.log(process.env.DEBUG); // outputs *,apicache correctly
const debug = makeDebug('brainfm:server/index');
debug('.env', env); // Doesn't show anything

.env

DEBUG =*,apicache

[thebigredgeek]

@FredyC @hyperh We get the environment variable within the load function in node.js and browser.js, example. We immediately call enable, passing the result of load() here… so all of the environment variables are uptaken when debug is first imported. You should be able to call debug.enable and pass whatever pattern you want at runtime if you are dynamically intaking environment variables as shown here, but make sure to do this before any debug instances are created as it won’t work for instances that are created after you call enable.

[danielkcz]

Isn’t this more likely an issue of timing when env is initialized by dotenv and read by debug? In your example you are importing debug and then later configuring dotenv. I am not sure where this is actually handled on debug side, I don’t actually see it in a source code.

I recommend adding npm script like "start": "node -r dotenv/config -r babel-polyfill server.js". It is a generally better approach like instead of hardwiring these things into code.