Using nconf for Node application configuration

nconf.md

It's easy enough to load json files in Node, but what's nice about nconf is it neatly takes care of mundane issues and provides a nice way of hierarchically designating the precedences of settings. For example, it is trivial to specify that application args will override environment settings, which will override any configuration file settings, which will override any application defaults.

This is more of a memory aid to myself. It's best to check out the full documentation the first time through to familiarize yourself with all that nconf has to offer.

https://github.com/flatiron/nconf

npm install --save nconf

Using nconf

var nconf = require('nconf');

var filepath = './path/to/config.json';

var defaults = {
  db: {
    host : '127.0.0.1',
    port : '27017'
  }
};

nconf.argv()
     .env()
     .file({ file: filepath })
     .defaults(defaults)
     .overrides({ always: 'be this value'});

// retrieve db object
var db = nconf.get('db');

// explicitly set some variables:
nconf.set('db:host', '127.0.0.1');
nconf.set('db:host', '27017');

// save configuration to file
nconf.save(function(err) {
  if (err) console.log(err);
});