Create env variable that will determine the root of http requests made to backend

xDavide9 · August 13, 2022, 5:04pm

site names:

quentertain
https://www.quentertain.com
quentertain-backend
https://www.quentertain-backend.netlify.app

As the title says I want to have an env variable that will change depending on the environment. When I’m developing I want it to have the value of localhost:9000 while when I deploy I want it to assume the value https://quentertain-backend.netlify.app (which is basically the backend of my web app).

github.com/xDavide9/Quentertain

Create env variable that will determine the root of http requests made to backend [NETLIFY]

opened 02:39PM - 11 Aug 22 UTC

closed 09:44AM - 16 Aug 22 UTC

xDavide9

### INTRO This isn't really an issue related to application code (I guess and… hope so atleast) but something I want to achieve on the build / devops part of the project and something that has to do with netlify, the platform I'm deploying everything on. The application performs http requests to the backend like this: `const options = { method: "GET", url: ```https://quentertain-backend.netlify.app/.netlify/functions/api/search/info```, params: { id: id, language: language }, };` I would like that to become something like this: `const options = { method: "GET", url: ```${process.env.REACT_APP_HTTP_BASE_URL}/.netlify/functions/api/search/info```, params: { id: id, language: language }, };` ### WHAT I WANT TO ACHIEVE Where that env variable would generally be "http://localhost:9000" for local development, but as soon as I push to master and trigger continous integration that will start a deploy on netlify it should change to "https://quentertain-backend.netlify.app". This is so that once the application expands and I have to mantain a lot of requests I don't have to switch all the time. If you don't think this is the right approach, feel free to suggest another one, ultimately my aim is to have a variable that updates automatically depending on environment to ease development

I created an issue on github that describes exactly the desired result in code, I am just having trouble with the configuration because the env variable set in the settings of the site doesn’t seem to ovverride what I put in my local .env. Any ways to achieve such convenient behaviour or similar?

Thank you so much

coelmay · August 14, 2022, 1:30am

Hi @xDavide9

Don’t commit the .env file to GitHub, use it locally only. This way when you deploy to Netlify the value environment variable set in the UI will get used.

xDavide9 · August 15, 2022, 6:11pm

Thank you so much, it worked! I think that .env was taking priority over gui-set env variable so It was still localhost when deployed. But if there’s no .env in the deploy it can’t be overrided!