infisical/docs/documentation/guides/node.mdx

---
title: "Node"
---

This guide demonstrates how to use Infisical to manage secrets for your Node stack from local development to production. It uses:

- Infisical (you can use [Infisical Cloud](https://app.infisical.com) or a [self-hosted instance of Infisical](https://infisical.com/docs/self-hosting/overview)) to store your secrets.
- The [infisical-node](https://github.com/Infisical/infisical-node) client SDK to fetch secrets back to your Node application on demand.

## Project Setup

To begin, we need to set up a project in Infisical and add secrets to an environment in it.

### Create a project

1. Create a new project in [Infisical](https://app.infisical.com/).

2. Add a secret to the development environment of this project so we can pull it back for local development. In the **Secrets Overview** page, press **Explore Development** and add a secret with the key `NAME` and value `YOUR_NAME`.

### Create an Infisical Token

Now that we've created a project and added a secret to its development environment, we need to provision an Infisical Token that our Node application can use to access the secret.

1. Head to the **Project Settings > Service Tokens** and press **Add New Token**. 
2. Call the token anything like **My App Token** and select **Development** under **Environment**.
3. Copy the token and keep it handy.


## Create a Node app

For this demonstration, we use a minimal Express application. However, the same principles will apply for any Node application such as those built on Koa or Fastify.

### Create an Express app

Initialize a new Node.js project with a default `package.json` file.

```console
npm init -y
```

Install `express` and [infisical-node](https://github.com/Infisical/infisical-node), the client Node SDK for Infisical.

```console
npm install express infisical-node
```

Finally, create an index.js file containing the application code.

```js
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const PORT = 3000;

const client = new InfisicalClient({
    token: "YOUR_INFISICAL_TOKEN"
});

app.get("/", async (req, res) => {
    const name = (await client.getSecret("NAME")).secretValue;
    res.send(`Hello, ${name}!`);
});

app.listen(PORT, () => {
    console.log(`Example app listening on port ${PORT}`);
});
```

Here, we initialized a `client` instance of the Infisical Node SDK with the Infisical Token
that we created earlier, giving access to the secrets in the development environment of the
project in Infisical that we created earlier.

Finally, start the app and head to `http://localhost:3000` to see the message **Hello, Your Name**.

```console
node index.js
```

The client fetched the secret with the key `NAME` from Infisical that we returned in the response of the endpoint.

At this stage, you know how to fetch secrets from Infisical back to your Node application. By using Infisical Tokens scoped to different environments, you can easily manage secrets across various stages of your project in Infisical, from local development to production.

## FAQ

<AccordionGroup>
    <Accordion title="Are my secrets exposed in transit every time the SDK fetches them?">
        No. Infisical uses end-to-end encryption which ensures that secrets are always encrypted in transit
        and decrypted on the client side. In fact, not even the server can decrypt your secrets (unless 
        that permission is explicitly granted from within the platform).

        Check out the [security guide](/security/overview).
    </Accordion>
    <Accordion title="Isn't it inefficient if my app makes a request every time it needs a secret?">
        The client SDK caches every secret and implements a 5-minute waiting period before
        re-requesting it. The waiting period can be controlled by setting the `cacheTTL` parameter at
        the time of initializing the client.
    </Accordion>
    <Accordion title="What if a request for a secret fails?">
        The SDK caches every secret and falls back to the cached value if a request fails. If no cached
        value ever-existed, the SDK falls back to whatever value is on `process.env`.
    </Accordion>
    <Accordion title="Can I still use process.env with the SDK?">
        Yes. If no `token` parameter is passed in at the time of initializing the client or nothing is found when requesting for a secret,
        then the SDK falls back to whatever value is on `process.env`.
    </Accordion>
    <Accordion title="What's the point if I still have to manage a token for the SDK?">
        The token enables the SDK to authenticate with Infisical to fetch back your secrets.
        Although the SDK requires you to pass in a token, it enables greater efficiency and security
        than if you managed dozens of secrets yourself without it. Here're some benefits:

        - You always pull in the right secrets because they're fetched on demand from a centralize source that is Infisical.
        - You can use the Infisical which comes with tons of benefits like secret versioning, access controls, audit logs, etc.
        - You now risk leaking one token that can be revoked instead of dozens of raw secrets.
        
        And much more.
    </Accordion>
    
</AccordionGroup>

See also:

- Explore the [Node SDK](https://github.com/Infisical/infisical-node)