Setting NODE_ENV on Galaxy

deployment
1

I have two instances of the same app hosted on Galaxy (staging and production). I want to be able to use process.env.NODE_ENV to differentiate between them in my code. However, I can’t seem to get NODE_ENV to be anything other than production. This is what I’m using in my staging settings. Any ideas on how to get this to work?

  "galaxy.meteor.com": {
    "env": {
      "ROOT_URL": "https://staging.touchmail.io",
      "MONGO_URL": "",
      "MONGO_OPLOG_URL": "",
      "NODE_ENV": "staging"
    }
  }
2

Try to use two different settings file - ‘settings-staging.json’ and ‘settings-production.json’ pointing to two instances. And use these files in the command line deploy command for deploying in to the two instances

3

Hey, thanks for your reply. That’s actually exactly what I’m doing for each of my sites. This is how I’d deploy to staging, for example:

DEPLOY_HOSTNAME=galaxy.meteor.com NODE_ENV=staging meteor deploy staging.touchmail.io --settings settings/staging.json

The issue is that if I set NODE_ENV to staging within the settings/staging.json it doesn’t set it on Galaxy. It’s always set to production.

4

Oh ok…How about setting NODE_ENV variable when you startup your app and match it to your settings.json file. So what I mean is, in your settings.json file create a key in your “galaxy.meteor.com and call it say “Mode” = Staging” or “Mode” =“Production” depending on either your staging or production settings file.

Then in your server code you can set the NODE_ENV variable depending on the Mode.

So the pseudo code would be:

Meteor.startup(function(){
if galaxy.meteor.com.mode === "staging {
process.env.NODE_ENV = “staging” } else {
process.env.NODE_ENV = “production” }

It is kind of hacky. Not sure if it is going to work. Just an idea to try it out…

5

It’s a decent idea. I’ll give it a try and report back. I also have a support request in at Galaxy so we’ll see what they say too.

6

Galaxy support got back to me and they’ve decided it’s a bug.

1 Like
7

Good to know about the bug

8

isProduction and isDevelopment are based on the NODE_ENV, so what happens if you set it to an arbitrary value? How about the debugOnly and productionOnly flags in packages? Note to self: Asking this in the issue might be a better idea :wink:

@timfletcher, I can conclude that you are using 1.3 and that 1.3 is working on Galaxy? At least the bug report talks about 1.3.

9

Yes, I’m using 1.3 on Galaxy and everything’s been working just fine so far.