Protip – dotenvx with Rails foreman

To get dotenvx working with Rails foreman modify the following:

• Procfile.dev
• bin/dev

Procfile.dev

Place dotenvx run ahead of bin/rails server to inject your encrypted .env files.

# Procfile.dev
web: dotenvx run -- bin/rails server
css: bin/rails tailwindcss:watch

bin/dev

Then modify foreman to turn off default .env loading – by loading from /dev/null.

...
# -e /dev/null prevents foreman loading .env by default
exec foreman start -f Procfile.dev -e /dev/null "$@"

Otherwise, foreman will load your .env file first – without decrypting it properly.

Run

Lastly, run bin/dev – dotenvx will inject your environment variables, and Rails will boot up.

$ bin/dev
11:10:20 web.1  | [[email protected]] injecting env (6) from .env
11:10:21 web.1  | => Booting Puma
11:10:21 web.1  | => Rails 7.1.3.4 application starting in development

Great! Enjoy development with encrypted .env files and Rails. 🎉