Environment and Configuration

Accessing environment variables

.NET provides access to environment variables via the System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable method. This method retrieves the value of an environment variable at runtime.

using System;

const string name = "EXAMPLE_VARIABLE";

var value = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable(name);
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
    Console.WriteLine($"Variable '{name}' not set.");
else
    Console.WriteLine($"Variable '{name}' set to '{value}'.");

Rust is providing the same functionality of accessing an environment variable at runtime via the var and var_os functions from the std::env module.

var function is returning a Result<String, VarError>, either returning the variable if set or returning an error if the variable is not set or it is not valid Unicode.

var_os has a different signature giving back an Option<OsString>, either returning some value if the variable is set, or returning None if the variable is not set. An OsString is not required to be valid Unicode.

use std::env;


fn main() {
    let key = "ExampleVariable";
    match env::var(key) {
        Ok(val) => println!("{key}: {val:?}"),
        Err(e) => println!("couldn't interpret {key}: {e}"),
    }
}

use std::env;

fn main() {
    let key = "ExampleVariable";
    match env::var_os(key) {
        Some(val) => println!("{key}: {val:?}"),
        None => println!("{key} not defined in the enviroment"),
    }
}

Rust is also providing the functionality of accessing an environment variable at compile time. The env! macro from std::env expands the value of the variable at compile time, returning a &'static str. If the variable is not set, an error is emitted.

use std::env;

fn main() {
    let example = env!("ExampleVariable");
    println!("{example}");
}

In .NET a compile time access to environment variables can be achieved, in a less straightforward way, via source generators.

Configuration

Configuration in .NET is possible with configuration providers. The framework is providing several provider implementations via Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration namespace and NuGet packages.

Configuration providers read configuration data from key-value pairs using different sources and provide a unified view of the configuration via the IConfiguration type.

using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;

class Example {
    static void Main()
    {
        IConfiguration configuration = new ConfigurationBuilder()
            .AddEnvironmentVariables()
            .Build();

        var example = configuration.GetValue<string>("ExampleVar");

        Console.WriteLine(example);
    }
}

Other providers examples can be found in the official documentation Configurations provider in .NET.

A similar configuration experience in Rust is available via use of third-party crates such as figment or config.

See the following example making use of config crate:

use config::{Config, Environment};

fn main() {
    let builder = Config::builder().add_source(Environment::default());

    match builder.build() {
        Ok(config) => {
            match config.get_string("examplevar") {
                Ok(v) => println!("{v}"),
                Err(e) => println!("{e}")
            }
        },
        Err(_) => {
            // something went wrong
        }
    }
}