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Changelog - 2026-09-12 ​

A blank env line no longer beats its default at module load ​

Fix

In one line. The earlier fix today taught applicationEnvironment.get() that KEY= means missing. Ten framework constants never went through get() - they read process.env directly at module load, with ??, which an empty string walks straight past.

ts
// APP_ENV_APPLICATION_TIMEZONE=      (present, empty)
const tz = process.env.APP_ENV_APPLICATION_TIMEZONE ?? 'Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh';
// before: ''      after: 'Asia/Ho_Chi_Minh'

The one that matters most has nothing to do with formatting ​

ApplicationEnvironment filters process.env by a prefix, and that prefix was read the same way:

ts
prefix: process.env.APPLICATION_ENV_PREFIX ?? 'APP_ENV';

Export APPLICATION_ENV_PREFIX= empty and the prefix becomes ''. Every name starts with the empty string, so the map stops filtering:

prefix blank  -> keys: APP_ENV_A, PATH, HOME, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, ...
prefix normal -> keys: APP_ENV_A

Two things follow. validateEnvs iterates exactly that list, so boot fails on the first unrelated empty system variable rather than on anything you configured. And applicationEnvironment.keys() starts publishing the names of every secret on the host.

What changed, and a new export you can use ​

Each of the ten reads now treats a blank line as absent, whitespace included:

ts
blankToUndefined(process.env.APP_ENV_LOGGER_FORMAT) ?? 'text';
WhereNames
@venizia/ignis-helpersAPPLICATION_ENV_PREFIX, APP_ENV_APPLICATION_TIMEZONE, and five winston plus one pino logger settings
@venizia/ignisAPP_ENV_APPLICATION_NAME, and every name the startup banner prints

blankToUndefined is new, and exported - from the root barrel and from @venizia/ignis-helpers/core, since it is pure. It answers undefined for undefined, '' and whitespace, and a trimmed string otherwise:

ts
import { blankToUndefined } from '@venizia/ignis-helpers/core';

const host = blankToUndefined(process.env.APP_ENV_REDIS_HOST) ?? 'localhost';

The obvious shorter fix, process.env.X || 'text', was written first and rejected by this repository's own @typescript-eslint/prefer-nullish-coalescing rule - correctly, because || also swallows '0'. Reach for blankToUndefined instead of || for exactly that reason: it says "blank", not "falsy", so a numeric setting where zero is meaningful stays safe.

An environment value read through applicationEnvironment.get(key, { defaultValue }) already gets this treatment and needs no wrapper.

Who is affected ​

You leave these names unset. Nothing changes. ?? and || agree on undefined.

A deployment of yours sets one of them to empty. You now get the documented default instead of a blank, which is what the empty line was always trying to say.

You set APPLICATION_ENV_PREFIX to a real prefix. Unchanged, still honoured.

Files: