Amazon OpsWorks NodeJS environment variables

Question

I configured a stack for a NodeJS application server using Amazon OpsWorks.

I need to access some environment variables which define Google API credentials. How can I achieve this ? I already spent more two days on this.

I ended up by the following chef recipe :

magic_shell_environment "GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID" do
    owner 'root'
    group 'root'
    value "********"
    mode  '0600'
end

I use the root account because it seems the NodeJS is run under that account. If I remove the owner and group attributes, I can read those environment variables fine (as the default ubuntu user). However, when I ssh to my instance and type echo $GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID as root, I get an empty string.

Also, where is logged the output of console.xxxx(...) ?

Is this a first-run? Environment variables aren't set until the second run — sethvargo
Do you mean that I have to restart the instance once after the configure step? — Juljan
No - I mean during the first Chef run, the env variables aren't loaded yet — sethvargo

nordhagen nordhagen · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-08T13:59:12

OpsWorks now lets you specify up to 20 custom environment variables in the app settings page. In the case of a node.js app these will be available in the process.env object. enter image description here

Amazon OpsWorks NodeJS environment variables

3 Answers