All 5 Environment Variables & Configuration Management questions
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What is the difference between a regular environment variable and one prefixed with NEXT_PUBLIC in Next.js? How do you manage different environment variable values for development, staging, and production environments? How would you validate that all required environment variables are present and correctly formatted before your app starts? What security risks are associated with environment variables, and how do you avoid them?
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Next.js › Environment Variables & Configuration Management

How do you add environment variables to a Next.js project?

Beginner

Answer

You create a file named .env.local in the root of your project and define key value pairs there, which Next.js automatically loads and makes available to your server side code through process.env, keeping sensitive values like API keys out of your actual source code.
# .env.local
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@localhost:5432/mydb
API_SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
Real-world example A team stores their database connection string in a .env.local file, keeping it out of version control while still making it available to their application code at runtime.

Common follow-ups: Should the .env.local file be committed to version control?;What is the difference between .env, .env.local, and .env.production?

Security Best Practices in Next.js;Database Integration with Next.js
All 5 Environment Variables & Configuration Management questions