zenver

A tiny, libc-free Zig library and CLI tool for parsing .env files. Use it as an in-memory config store or to export variables into your shell.

Note: zenver does not mutate the process environment. loadFile fills an in-memory store you query with getSingleVariable; the CLI's -e flag prints shell export lines so your shell can set them. getenv and child processes will not see loaded variables unless you eval/source the CLI output.

Build the binary:

zig build

Export variables into your current shell:

eval $(./zig-out/bin/zenver -e .env)
# or
source <(./zig-out/bin/zenver -e .env)

Add zenver as a dependency:

zig fetch --save https://github.com/Blize/zenver/archive/refs/heads/main.tar.gz

Wire it up in your build.zig:

const zenver_dep = b.dependency("zenver", .{});
exe.root_module.addImport("zenver", zenver_dep.module("zenver"));

Then use it in your code:

const std = @import("std");
const Zenver = @import("zenver").Zenver;

pub fn main(init: std.process.Init) !void {
    const io = init.io;

    // Zenver manages its own arena internally; pass any allocator.
    var zenv = Zenver.init(std.heap.page_allocator, io, ".env");
    defer zenv.deinit();

    // Parse all variables from the file passed on init (or pass a path here).
    try zenv.loadFile(null);
    // try zenv.loadFile(".env.testing");

    // Or add a single variable.
    try zenv.loadSingleVariable(.{ .key = "PORT", .value = "3000" });

    // Look a variable up (returns ?EnvPair).
    if (zenv.getSingleVariable("PORT")) |port| {
        std.log.info("PORT={s}", .{port.value});
    }

    std.log.info("loaded {d} variables", .{zenv.getLengthOfEnvList()});
}

Parsed keys and values are owned by the Zenver instance and stay valid until deinit() is called.

# Comments and blank lines are ignored
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432
SECRET_KEY=mysecretkey

• Zig 0.16.0

This is a list of optional todo's which would be nice but for my small use cases have not yet affected me

• Optionally apply variables to the real process environment (so getenv and child processes see them) via platform APIs / setenv.
• Trim surrounding whitespace and strip surrounding quotes (KEY="value", KEY='value').
• Last-wins override for duplicate keys, with O(1) lookup via a hash map.

License MIT