Use environment variables in config.toml or config.yaml or config.json

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I’d like to use an environment variable like $HOME or $DROPBOX when I specify archetypeDir, contentDir, dataDir, layoutDir, publishDir, staticDir, and themesDir, but so far I haven’t been able to do that. There’s no example of this in https://gohugo.io/overview/configuration and I’m wondering if it’s possible. From the internet searching I’ve done, I think TOML files do not allow environment variables, but maybe this would work in config.yaml or config.json? Thanks for any tips about this.

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The documentation shows how to define the title of the blog as an environment variable. This is an example and should apply to other config values.

$ env HUGO_TITLE="Some Title" hugo

What I want to know is how to define something in the params section as an environment variable:

[Params]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
  subtitle = "random"

I tried HUGO_PARAMS_SUBTITLE but that didn’t work.

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I don’t think params can be arbitrarily set; maybe someone else know for sure.

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If your [Params] section is in config.toml then you should be able to access it using the following:

env HUGO_PARAMS_subtitle="new subtitle" hugo

If your section is in another config file but still found on the default config path: ./config/_default/ then you need to specify the file as well. Let’s say you want to access a parameter (called subtitle) in the params.toml file, under [map]. Then you need the following command:

env HUGO_PARAMS_MAP_subtitle="new subtitle" Hugo
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