[Support Guide] Using environment variables on Netlify correctly

[marklchaves]

I could use some help on this topic.

Here’s what I’ve done so far.

1. Created an app that needs to read in an API key.
2. Created a an environment variable for it in my Netlify Build & Deploy > Environment settings.
3. Created a Netlify (AWS) Lambda function to expose my environment variable from step 2.

This works great so far. When I hit the endpoint for my Lambda function, it displays my API key in a webpage.

But, I need to access this key in my server.js. Sorry for the “noob” question, how to read my API key env var in my server.js file? What am I missing?

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Cross-posted from here.

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Hi @witcradg, I’ve been reading up on Lambda functions and environment variables. I went through the functions-playground and ended up creating a Netlify function based on this GREETING example. It works great! I can see my environment variable displayed on a webpage when I hit the endpoint in my browser. But, I’d like to use it in my app instead. Sorry for the noob question, how do I retrieve the environment variable (in my case an API key) programmatically and use it in my server.js code? I…