Q3: How do environment variables work in Node.js?
Environment variables are exposed at runtime on the process.env global object. Libraries like dotenv load key-value pairs from .env files into process.env.
Key Takeaways
- Access environmental settings via
process.env.VAR_NAME. - Used to inject runtime configurations without hardcoding secrets.
Knowledge Check
What npm package is commonly used to load .env file variables into process.env?