process.env.NODE_ENV is undefined

Question

I\'m trying to follow a tutorial on NodeJs. I don\'t think I missed anything but whenever I call the process.env.NODE_ENV the only value I get back is undefine

Answer 1

You can also set it by code, for example:

process.env.NODE_ENV = 'test';

Answer 2

For people using *nix (Linux, OS X, etc.), there's no reason to do it via a second export command, you can chain it as part of the invoking command:

NODE_ENV=development node server.js

Easier, no? :)

Answer 3

In UBUNTU use:

$ export NODE_ENV=test

Answer 4

If you faced this probem in React, you need react-scripts@0.2.3 and higher. Also for other environment variables than NODE_ENV to work in React, they need to be prefixed with REACT_APP_.

Answer 5

We ran into this problem when working with node on Windows.

Rather than requiring anyone who attempts to run the app to set these variables, we provided a fallback within the application.

var environment = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';

In a production environment, we would define it per the usual methods (SET/export).

Answer 6

For me, the issue was that I was using the pkg library to turn my app into an executable binary. In that case, the accepted solutions didn't work. However, using the following code solved my problem:

const NODE_ENV = (<any>process).pkg ? 'production' : process.env.NODE_ENV;

I found this solution here on GitHub.