LAB4_Set environment variables in your application

⚒️ Set environment variables in your application

Objectives

In this step, we will:

• Configure a .env file with database environment variables

We will cover:

1. Copy Astra database environment variables
2. Create .env file and paste in environment variables

1. Copy Astra database environment variables

In the "hello world" section, we pushed a simple helloWorld "test" function to get a feel for how things work. Now, we are going to start working with the "real" code to get our game working. To do this, we need to set a group of environment variables referring to the database we just created with DataStax Astra, not only in our code, but across GitHub and Netlify as well.

Why are we doing this, you might ask? Because as part of our CI/CD pipeline our tests will attempt to connect to our data layer to ensure everything is hooked up and working. Not only that, but once you deploy your application to Netlify it will use these variables to hook up your production app and power your serverless functions.

We set these all ONE time and that's it, you are ready to go. With that, let's do it.

First things first, we need to get the values we are going to use for our variables.

✅ Step 1a: Go back to the Astra UI and click the CONNECT button above the display of the database you just created.

This will bring you to the Connect page.

✅ Step 1b: Click the clipboard button to the far right to copy all of your environment variables to the copy buffer.

The Document API option should already be chosen by default. Notice the copy widget on the right of the UI.

2. Create .env file and paste in environment variables

The following instructions are the same whether using GitPod or a local IDE.

✅ Step 2a: Ensure that you are in the ??battlestax??? directory

✅ Step 2b: Copy the contents of the .env.template file into an .env file.

The .env file allows us to customize our own environmental variables. We set our Astra credentials to env variables, which are outside of our program.

📘 Command to execute

cat .env.example > .env

✅ Step 2c: Open the .env file you created a moment ago and paste in the values you copied from Astra.

✅ Step 2d: Ensure to delete the word "export" from each line as we don't need those inside our .env file.

✅ Step 2e: Update the ASTRA_DB_PASSWORD value <database_password> with the password you used for your database.

✅ Step 2f: When you open the .env file notice the GAMES_COLLECTION=games variable. Don't overwrite this. We'll need it here in a moment.

✅ Step 2g: Save your changes.

When completed, your .env file should look something like this:

Now you are set to run your application locally against your Astra serverless database. We'll test all of that in an upcoming section. For now, let's move to the next section.