Getting environment variables at runtime in a compiled VueJS app - vue.js

I'm working on a VueJS app that uses env vars in multiple places. It runs on GCloud with nginx serving the files compiled with vue-cli-service build.
When developing everything works well with the env vars set in .env.development and .env.development.local files and used in JS with process.env.VUE_APP_FOO. I'm not using .env.production as some of these env vars shouldn't be committed to our repository.
For the staging and prod environment of all of our projects, we use GCloud's config maps which let us provide env vars to the pods. The issue in this project is that vue-cli-service build requires the env vars to be available at build time, which is not the case in our setup. Config maps are only available in the pods that run the images.
Out of curiosity, I checked the compiled code and all uses of process.env are quite simply replaced by an object with all vue env vars (basic ones + VUE_APP_* ones). So for example,
console.log(process.env.VUE_APP_FOO);
is compiled to
console.log(Object({NODE_ENV: "production", BASE_URL: "/", VUE_APP_FOO: "bar"}).VUE_APP_FOO);
Except that in our case, VUE_APP_FOO is missing from the object as it's not available in the environment when building the app.
So as is, it doesn't seem possible to provide env vars when the server is started or the JS file is served. Is there a way to tell vue-cli-service to not compile the env that way? Or any other alternative?
The only one I found so far is to replace the uses of env vars with their actual value directly in the compiled JS file when the pod starts using sed, but that's pretty ugly and could break easily.

One approach you can follow is to provide the production values when building locally. Another approach is to setup a continuous integration workflow that fetches your environment variables from wherever it is stored, builds the apps and pushes to production servers. I personally work with approach 2.
It is relatively easy to setup a github workflow that runs whenever your code is pushed to a particlar branch

Related

Application environment variables undefined when application is served by Amplify

I have a Vue.js app hosted by AWS Amplify.
In Vue, env vars can be set application-wide by using .env. files.
I currently use such files for development and for production modes, containing different values.
When locally building and serving my application the above works as expected. However, once Amplify deploys my app (in my case I use Amplify's CD feature), these variables are not defined.
I know I can define the same env vars in Amplify, but that would mean I need to manage these values in two places since won't be redeploying while developing. so this seems to be prone to errors (I will need to remember to update the vars on both the application end and amplify console whenever I need to make a change for example).
I wonder if this behavior is expected or is there something I am missing in my setup.
Thanks!
I was also facing the same issue in my React app.
The thing is, you need to have a .env file in your app with all the environment variables.
Why? — The reason behind that is, it generates static HTML, CSS and JS files. Those files can't access process during the runtime.
After adding all the environment variables in Amplify, you have to add one more command in your build stage in App build specification.
You can refer to this official documentation on how to implement this.
If you don't care much about your environment variables, you can use this hack: printenv. This will store all the environment variables of your OS and your application in the .env file.
My config looks something like this:
build:
commands:
- 'printenv >> .env'
- 'npm run build'

Missing .env in Vue CLI after run build

I'm building an app using Vue CLI 3.
I've included .env in my project and everything works fine.
But when i'm building the app for production via npm run build there is no .env file in my dist folder, so i can't change my environmental variables in production server.
Any solution or it's just fine?
This is supposed to happen. The env variables are embedded in your build.
You can make seperate .env files for production. These variables will be used during the production build.
Create a new .env file named: .env.production
Source: https://cli.vuejs.org/guide/mode-and-env.html#modes
It is normal because application needed to be recompiled when .env file changed.
For convenience you can use .env.prod or .env.dev for your CI/CD pipeline.

Vue webpack environment variables configuration

I am new to vue in general and i am trying to configure some environment variables for some projects of mine so i can do some tests with cookies but apperently i ran the simple webpack configurations when creating these projects, therefore i dont have access to the config directory to edit said variables.
I created a vue.config.js file and used the following lines:
module.exports = {
publicPath: 'myAppName'
}
However if i run it on development mode, or simply use npm run serve my app runs at "http://localhost:8080/myAppName" instead of simply "myAppName".
How do i correctly configure my environment variables for my projects without having to start over from scratch? I am using vueCli 3 btw.
I tried following these examples but none have worked:
Using Environment Variables with Vue.js
I also have .env file and a .env.development file but i am not sure what to add to it.

How to use environment variable in Vue built with webpack during runtime?

I build my production version of Vue client using webpack, and inside of my Vue code, I use some environment variables.
The problem is that when it is building no env vars are set.
I tried following stuff.
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
'process.env' : {
MYVAR : JSON.stringify(process.env.MYVAR)
}
})
However, since when it is being built, env var is not yet provided (it will be provided during the run time) and they become just undefined.
What I'd like to do is accessing env vars during run time, not setting them up when it is being built.
Summary:
Assuming that I build it with webpack, is there any way I can use environment variables that is provided when the server starts to run, not when it is built?
Any advice would be appriciated! Thanks!

How to use deploy specific .env in Vuejs

I have several environments that I build my Vuejs application to. Each of those environments has a different API that I'd like to call.
My ideal scenario is that I have an .env file in the root of each of the servers I deploy to, so that when I deploy my build, the Vue app looks at the .env that is in it's environment specific location and pulls the relevant API path variables from inside of it.
This way, I can build the app once, and have it deployed on multiple servers and I don't need to make a specific build for each server.
I've tried using dotenv-webpack but it seems that the .env that's included in the build is just from whatever the value is when I create the build, and not fetched from any .env on the individual servers.
I've found that I can use axios to GET a js file from /static but this doesn't really seem like the cleanest approach.