I'm writing tests for my Express project, but when I run the test script my environment variables are not loaded.

In other threads people suggested using --setupFiles dotenv/config, which I did, but unfortunately it didn't work. I tried both adding it to my test script and to a jest.config.js file, but none worked. Does someone have any hint on how to fix this?

Context

This is how I setup jest on package.json:

"scripts": {
    "test": "jest --watchAll --setupFiles dotenv/config"
  },
"jest": {
    "testEnvironment": "node"
},

At the top of my app.js file, I load my environment variables with require('dotenv').config();

And this is my folder structure:

I'm writing tests for my Express project, but when I run the test script my environment variables are not loaded.

In other threads people suggested using --setupFiles dotenv/config, which I did, but unfortunately it didn't work. I tried both adding it to my test script and to a jest.config.js file, but none worked. Does someone have any hint on how to fix this?

Context

This is how I setup jest on package.json:

"scripts": {
    "test": "jest --watchAll --setupFiles dotenv/config"
  },
"jest": {
    "testEnvironment": "node"
},

At the top of my app.js file, I load my environment variables with require('dotenv').config();

And this is my folder structure:

• javascript
• node.js
• express
• jestjs
• dotenv

2 Answers 2

Fixed it by moving .env file from the src/ folder to the root folder.

Have a look at this project. It uses both cross-env and dotenv to pass env variables to Express:

cross-env NODE_ENV=production node -r dotenv/config ./build/srv/main.js

Alternatively the sibling project uses cross-env only.

Disclosure: I'm the author of the above 'crisp' projects.