Firebase Environment Variables have me losing my mind

Hi Bob!
We have an integration for Firebase at Doppler (https://doppler.com/) (*where I work).
I use it too for my side project Stock Alarm (https://www.indiehackers.com/product/stock-alarm) and it makes things a lot easier for me. Let me know if you already found a different solution otherwise I would be happy to help you get set up.
Cheers,
Ruud

Hey Bob!

Ran into this issue as well. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but in order to access .env variables, you need to set them using 'firebase functions:config:set someservice.key="THE API KEY" '

HERE IS THE CONTEXT
I'm using a lot of pseudo code here because I don't want to fumble around the docs while I'm just trying to get a point across
Also... I'm sorry in advance. This is infuriating. I can't figure out what I'm doing to break my markdown here. my code runs. It's 100% the environment variable problem...

I apologize in advance, I finished typing this out and I realized how messy it is. I just don't know how to write it out much cleaner

MEVN Project split into Client and Server files inside of the root. The server doesn't actually use Vue, just Express. The Client side is Vue but it's not live yet so I'm not concerned with that.

In my development environment I have dotenv installed

I'm running:

localhost:9000 MEVN nodemon server with .env
server.js

// Checking for production, loading environment variables
    if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production") {
      require("dotenv").config();
    }
// Importing required modules
import express from "express";
import bodyParser from "body-parser";
import mysql, { format } from "mysql";
const mysqlQueries = require("./models/mysqlQueries");
const port = process.env.PORT || 9000; // Defining port
// Define DB
    const selectedDB = "cm4";
    if (selectedDB === "cm4") {
      var db = mysql.createConnection({
        host: process.env.DB4_HOST,
        user: process.env.DB4_USER,
        password: process.env.DB4_PASS,
        database: process.env.DB4_SCHEMA
      });
    } 
      console.log(Connected to ${selectedDB});
    } else {
      console.log(Database Problem ${selectedDB});
    }
// Connect to DB
    db.connect((err) => {
      if (err) {
        console.log(Problem connecting to database. Reason: ${err});
      }
      console.log("Connected to MySQL Database!");
    });

This works just fine locally because .ENV works as expected
So, when I go to localhost:9000/api/db/select/id/1
I get the JSON returned for ID 1 in my MySQL database's main table. The database layer works nicely.

localhost:5000 firebase live server
I go to localhost:5000/api/db/select/id/1
I get the 404 error (obviously you can see why from the above code, the environment variables are only defined locally)

The thing is that I have tried making the same environment variables with firebase cloud functions and making an if statement:

server.js
// I'm going to put in some pseudo-code here for the sake of demonstration
// var is used instead of let so that it can be accessed globally here

    if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== "production") {
      require("dotenv").config();
    var db = mysql.createConnection({
        host: process.env.DB4_HOST,
        user: process.env.DB4_USER,
        password: process.env.DB4_PASS,
        database: process.env.DB4_SCHEMA
      });
    }
    else {
    // // require firebase functions
    var db = mysql.createConnection({
        host: firebaseFunction().db4.host,
        user: firebaseFunction().db4.user,
        password: firebaseFunction().db4.pass,
        database: firebaseFunction().db4.schema
      });
    }

I'm sure that isn't right but I was a lot more careful about syntax when I was going at it for hours. I've deleted a lot of the bad code to start fresh numerous times.

I've set the environment variables
Again, I'm going from memory, not looking at the documentation

• BASH
  firebase.functions:set db4.host="myHostIP", db4.user="myUsername" ...

Then I publish the functions:
firebase deploy --only functions

Finally, when I sign into firebase, there is nothing in FIREBASE > CLOUD FUNCTIONS > (Empty)

When I try to go to localhost:5000/api/db/select/id/1 I still get the 404 error.

@weekash sounds familiar?

What seem to be the problem exactly? Are you unable to start your Node app, or Vue frontend, or what exactly? Firebase on Node requires admin keys while Firebase credentials on the frontend can be ingested via env vars and processed in context by your build env.

If you’d like to provide us with more context I’m sure there’s a way to solve this.

I'm here to help! Firebase is The Devil.