About .env → JSON

Parse KEY=value lines (with quotes + comments) into a JSON object. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Converters collection.

Use Cases

• Developers converting .env configs into JSON for application settings files
• DevOps teams transforming environment files into JSON for API-based config services
• Full-stack devs importing .env variables into JSON-based configuration systems
• Platform engineers converting environment configs for Terraform or Pulumi input

Tips

• Paste .env content with comments and quotes to get clean JSON output
• Comments and blank lines are automatically stripped from the output
• Quoted values preserve inner spaces and special characters correctly

Fun Facts

• The .env file format has no official specification — each library (dotenv, python-dotenv, direnv) handles edge cases like multiline values and escaping differently.
• Docker Compose adopted .env files in version 1.7 (2016), automatically loading variables from a .env file in the project root — standardizing the convention further.
• The JSON specification (RFC 7159, by Douglas Crockford) requires all keys to be quoted strings — unlike JavaScript objects, which allow unquoted keys.

FAQ

What .env format does it parse?

Standard dotenv syntax: KEY=value per line, optional quotes around values with spaces, # for comments, \\n for newlines inside values.

Are comments preserved?

No — JSON has no comment concept. Line comments are stripped silently. Attached comments (`KEY=value # comment`) have the comment part discarded.

How does it handle multi-line values?

Quoted values that span multiple lines are joined. Backslash-newline continuations are also supported. The output JSON string uses `\n` for line breaks.

What about variable interpolation (${OTHER})?

Not resolved — treated as literal string. To resolve, use a dotenv library in Node that expands references first.