Verify if my node.js instance is dev or production

Question

Normally you should run a node app in production like this:

NODE_ENV=production node app.js

Applications with Express, Socket.IO and other use process.env.NODE_ENV to figure out the environment.

In development you can omit that and just run the app normally with node app.js.

You can detect the environment in your code like this:

var env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';
loadConfigFile(env + '.json', doStuff);

Resources:

How do you detect the environment in an express.js app?