This would be very useful for storing API keys or other sensitive information. From what I understand, you can use config files locally but they won't work on meteor.com, but I heard a rumor that environment variables were soon to be supported, or are already as of a recent release, but I can't find any examples.
Can someone provide an example of how to retrieve a value from an environment variable or some other safe location?
You can actually access the process object to retrieve environment variables in Meteor. In essence, just do the same as in this solution
After some thought, storing them all in a .js file inside an object literal, adding that file to the .gitignore, and checking in a corresponding .js.sample file with dummy or blank values would do the trick.
There's a much better way to handle environment variables. If you come from Ruby on Rails you're used to setting your environment variables in your .ENV file or in your config/application.yml file.
Meteor handles environment variables in a similar way.
Inside your server folder in your project, create a file and name it settings.json. Add this file to your gitignore file.
Inside this JSON file, you can save any environment variables you need.
{
"facebookAppId": "6666667527666666",
"facebookAppSecret": "00004b20dd845637777321cd3c750000",
"amazonS3Bucket": "bucket-name"
}
To use these values inside your app during runtime, start Meteor with a --settings option flag.
$ meteor run --settings server/settings.json
To use the values, just call the Meteor.settings object.
ServiceConfiguration.configurations.upsert(
{ service: "facebook" },
{
$set: {
appId: Meteor.settings.facebookAppId,
secret: Meteor.settings.facebookAppSecret
}
}
);
That's all there is to it! Keep your settings safe, and do not commit your keys.
Meteor.settings object on the Client only if the corresponding keys are wrapped into "public": key.