In our Node.JS application, we have been specifying application environments (dev, qa, stage, prod, etc.) in package.json as below:
"start-prod": "NODE_ENV=prod node ./bin/www",
"start-qa": "NODE_ENV=qa node ./bin/www"
etc.
However, we have realized recently that using NODE_ENV in this manner to specify app environments is not a good practice. So, I am trying to use the npm package node-config
for this purpose as well as for loading environment-specific configuration which is currently coming from AWS Parameter Store since there seem multiple advantages of using overriding config files over repeated configuration in AWS Parameter Store.
Therefore, I have created different config.json files, e.g., dev.config.json, qa.config.json, etc. But I am not sure how to specify/read the environment (qa, dev, stage, prod, etc.) and load configuration from the corresponding config.json file.
It may be a very stupid question but I am not able to find a good implementation example for node-config. Any help will be highly appreciated.
As documented on the node-config wiki, you can create:
default.js
prod.js
dev.js
qa.js
Related
I am working on a NodeJS application which is a containerized application. I use Jenkins to build and deploy it. I have an environment .env file and along with this, also have .env files based on environments.
For example: .env.DEV, .env.SQA, .env.STG and .env.PROD.
Each file has different values for the variables based on environments.
When I am deploying my application, it always fetches variables from the .env file instead of specific environment file i.e. .env.DEV (if deploying on DEV server).
How do we use specific environment file while doing the deployment on Jenkins?
Note - I followed this great content on dotenv library but I didn't find anything helpful for my use-case. I even Googled a lot but didn't find much on this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You can use dotenv-flow which does exactly this, given the value of NODE_ENV environment value it will load the expected environment.
You also will need to make sure that the container receives the proper environment values from jenkins, this might help.
I'm developing an application with my team with Firebase, and I want to deploy my app both in development and production environments.
To achieve this, I have done several things. (Details are below)
But NODE_ENV keeps set as 'development' when I deploy it to firebase functions app.
How can I deploy it as 'development' to firebase?
Those are what I have done to achieve my goal.
Make another firebase project and function for 'production' (Use current firebase project as 'development')
firebase console
Edit .firebaserc file and set aliases for my projects (to use firebase --use command)
.firebaserc
Separate RDS Instance and Slack Monitoring app
Separate .env files with .env.dev and .env.prod and use secrets based on NODE_ENV
set .env files
Add 'dev' script to package.json to deploy as 'NODE_ENV = development'
package.json scripts
This is the code I wrote to find out is which environment my server is running
node_env console.log
And this is from my github actions log and firebase console log
github actions and firebase console log
When I run my app in local with 'serve' command, console.log prints 'development' as I expected.
I guess 'firebase deploy' command automatically changes my NODE_ENV to production when it is deployed.
Or did I make some mistakes to do this?
The recommended way to have a development and production environment is to have two separate Firebase projects, which you are already making use of. For the sake of an example, let's assume you have hyositive-app as your production project and hyositive-dev as your development project.
Defining Deployed Environment Variables
Use of environment variables with Cloud Functions for Firebase are based on .env files compatible with the dotenv package. By default, the following files are supported (ignoring others!):
Name
Purpose
.env
Environment variables common to all environments
.env.<projectID>
Environment variables used when deployed to the named project (e.g. .env.hyositive-app)
.env.<alias>
Environment variables used when deployed to the aliased project (e.g. .env.dev).Note: default is the only alias configured out of the box. dev/prod/etc. are not defined.
.env.local
Environment variables used when using emulating functions on your system using the Cloud Functions emulator.
To use .env.dev and .env.prod, you will need to define them as project aliases in your .firebaserc file (or you can continue using development and production aliases and just update the filenames to match):
{
"projects": {
"default": "hyositive-dev",
"dev": "hyositive-dev",
"prod": "hyositive-app"
}
}
This then allows you to use .env.dev and .env.prod instead of .env.hyositive-dev and .env.hyositive-app respectively.
Using Environment Variables
The Cloud Functions runtime (the process that runs your deployed code) defines a number of built-in environment variables that have various purposes (such as allowing you to use initializeApp() with no arguments).
In addition to these variables, a handful of language-specific variables are also defined by the runtime to aid in painless deployment of code. However, the Cloud Functions documentation states to not rely on their values unless you set the values yourself.
The Node.js Cloud Functions runtime is built using the Cloud Functions Framework (however, it is not guaranteed to perfectly match this open source version). Because this runtime executes using Node.js and makes use of other packages such as express, it sets NODE_ENV to production, to minimise unexpected behaviour that depends on its value. But as mentioned above, this behaviour should not be relied on even though it is unlikely to change.
To override NODE_ENV to development, you would add it into .env.dev, .env.hyositive-dev and/or .env.local (as appropriate). Similarly, you should also define NODE_ENV as production in .env.prod or .env.hyositive-app (as appropriate).
Rather than rely on NODE_ENV, I would recommend defining behaviour around another variable that you have complete control over (such as HYOSITIVE_ENV) or compare against the executing project ID to determine whether it is running in the production project or not.
const PROD_PROJECT_ID = "hyositive-app",
// DEV_PROJECT_ID = "hyositive-dev",
PROJECT_ID = JSON.parse(process.env.FIREBASE_CONFIG).projectId,
isProduction = PROJECT_ID === PROD_PROJECT_ID;
Note: This other thread may have some useful background information.
I've been using K8S for a year or so and continue to revisit a problem.
My app is running in K8S and I now need to debug it. I have a NodeJS App that I'm asking about. But similar questions could be asked about Java SpringBoot apps (but this question is just for NodeJS).
I want to use my favorite IDE (IntelliJ or VSCode) to run the app but the app is currently getting it's configuration (inside K8S) using ConfigMaps and Secrets.
(Q) Is there a "best practice" or "pattern" that can be followed that supports the DRY principle and has configuration in one place that can be used for both K8S and when running locally.
Background
I have a NodeJS app that I decided to use ENVIRONMENT variables to hold configuration information because that worked well in IntelliJ IDE, in Docker and in K8S.
I used npm dotenv and created .env.local, .env.stage, .env.prod files to support running in different environments. This worked well enough until it was running in K8S and someone wanted to tweak the configuration and didn't believe that rebuilding the image was the best way to support this. Instead the K8S experts told me I should use ConfigMaps and Secrets, so I converted from the dotenv approach to use the K8S ConfigMaps and Secrets.
I kept the old .env files around just in case and I can use them but the source code no longer call uses dotenv package.
require('dotenv').config()
process.env.myConfigVariable
So I need to either add that code back to support debugging, or manually set the environment variables. I'm wondering if there is a better approach.
I have yaml files templates to make it easy to recreate the deployment from scratch if/when needed.
.env.local
deploy/
helm/
create-configmap.yaml
create-secret.yaml
src/
common/*
appMain.js
Some of the approaches I've considered:
(a) Accept it and have two configs (one for local and one for K8S). Leave the code for dotenv but don't deploy a .env file when deploying to K8S.
(b) Run local k8s (like minikube or k3s) and use my ConfigMap and Secrets as I would with K8S. I then need to figure out how to connect from my IDE to the local K3S environment and open ports in the k3s environment to support this. Some solutions include: Bridge to Kubernetes, YouTube Video Remote Debugging in Kubernetes with Cloud Code,
Debug Java Microservices in Kubernetes with IntelliJ, and I'm sure several others.
(c) Use a JSON config file instead of dotenv. For example, use a JSON config file for everything and map that to /app/config.json and that same config file can be used in both environments. I could have config-local.json, config-stage.json, and config-prod.json to support the different environments.
(d) You tell me. What's another way?
Thanks!
What's the best way to set environment variables when developing nodejs on a local machine for App Engine Flex environment? If they're set in app.yaml then they don't get set during local development. Is there a way to force this, or should I use something like dotenv and keep track of the same environment variables in 2 places?
Sensitive data (e.g. API Keys) should not be committed to source code.
The way I went around that is storing a .env file in Google Storage. Then you can use #google-cloud/storage to download it in production (using a prestart hook) and dotenv to load variables into memory.
You may find a full guide here: http://gunargessner.com/gcloud-env-vars/
PS: I would go for Aidan's answer for storing any data that is not sensitive. I have myself used dotenv satisfactorily in the past.
Similar to that, there's nconf, the package that gcloud itself uses for examples. Pretty neat!
Option 1:
require('dotenv').config({path: '/custom/project/root/app.yaml'})
Option 2:
Maintain both a .env file and a .yaml file with the same keys but different values (local and GAE, respectively). In app.yaml, I make sure not to deploy my .env file by adding the following line:
skip_files : .env
You will then need to add a check on ('dotenv').config() to make sure that it doesn't error or overwrite your process variables if no .env file is detected.
Aidan's suggestion is good.
As configurations should be different on GAE and local, I would suggest option 2 is best - a separate .ENV for local and .YAML for GAE environments.
One minor point though. I'd suggest to add a .gcloudignore files, something like the below:
.gcloudignore
.git
.gitignore
.env
staging.yaml
node_modules/
I've come across people using both methods to do config management.
What are the pros and cons of each approach?
If I have a lot of variables that I store in my config object, will I have to set them all one by one in an upstart script before executing the node app?
You generally use envvar to keep an application stateless. The same codebase should work in dev, staging, test and production environment.
You will put var like MySQL config, API keys, if log is enabled or not, if debug is on or not ...
Config file are used for variables which are not dependent of the environment. For instance, name of the application, number of items per page ...
I guess you can use config.json file for storing big configs. ENV I've usually use for passing application port or something very important for normal application start. For example if you use some external lib, it's better to be able to pass custom path to lib executor in ENV.
P.S. You should never save config.json in SVN.