Configuration

Configuration across web, mobile and apollo-sever-express follows CRA's environment variables. Configuration specific to cloud deployment is found in the Pulumi stack.

Create Full Stack loads environment variables from .env files into process.env. Storing configuration in the environment separate from code is based on The Twelve-Factor App methodology.

.env files are in their corresponding platform packages directories. For instance, packages/web/.env.production or packages/mobile/.env.production.

  • .env: Default.
  • .env.local: Local overrides. This file is loaded for all environments except test.
  • .env.development, .env.test, .env.production: Environment-specific settings.
  • .env.development.local, .env.test.local, .env.production.local: Local overrides of environment-specific settings.

Files on the left have more priority than files on the right:

  • npm start: .env.development.local, .env.local, .env.development, .env
  • npm run build: .env.production.local, .env.local, .env.production, .env
  • npm test: .env.test.local, .env.test, .env (note .env.local is missing)

With Pulumi AWS

productiondevelopmenttest
Pulumi.production.yml or .env.production.env.development.env.test

Pulumi stack configuration is in the pulumi-aws package. For instance, packages/pulumi-aws/Pulumi.production.yml. If Auth0 is included, Auth0 local development configuration is included in the Pulumi stack Pulumi.development.yml since this exists in the cloud.

Pulumi stacks shouldn't be confused with NODE_ENV. A NODE_ENV of production tells CRA and Node to set various optimizations (ex. minification) relevant for running on a server. NODE_ENV is used to determine which .env files are loaded. Alternatively, Pulumi stacks can be seen as deployed environments (ex. production or staging). If you were to create a staging environment you'd have a Pulumi.staging.yml which would also load .env.production.

Edit this page