Node.js, how to set NODE_ENV?

[dluc]

In my local development I have the env vars ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT and DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT set ot Development.

Looks like the deployment is picking this up this value when deploying to Azure, e.g. here's my aspire-manifest.json, and in Azure portal the NODE_ENV env var is set to development:

    "my-nodejs-app": {
      "type": "container.v1",
      "build": {
        "context": "../../tools/MyNodejsApp",
        "dockerfile": "../../tools/MyNodejsApp/Dockerfile"
      },
      "env": {
        ...
        "NODE_ENV": "development",        <<< ======
        ...
      },
      "bindings": {
        ...
      }
    },

relevant code:

Aspire/src/CommunityToolkit.Aspire.Hosting.NodeJS.Extensions/NodeJSHostingExtensions.cs

Line 137 in 6821c63

.WithEnvironment("NODE_ENV", builder.ApplicationBuilder.Environment.IsDevelopment() ? "development" : "production");

Note: I'm using builder.AddPnpmApp(...), and in the Dockerfile I use this:

ARG NODE_ENV=production
ENV NODE_ENV=$NODE_ENV

Any suggestion about how to have NODE_ENV set accordingly to the current environment, e.g. development locally and production on Azure?

Should I set the env var explicitly checking builder.ExecutionContext.IsRunMode?

[dluc]

/cc @aaronpowell - #153 is the only mention of NODE_ENV I found.

[aaronpowell]

It looks like something is incorrect in how the dotnet publish is reporting the result of builder.ApplicationBuilder.Environment.IsDevelopment() - are you sure that dotnet publish is using the .NET release configuration?

[dluc]

are you sure that dotnet publish is using the .NET release configuration?

I don't knwo, how can I check? I'm using azd up by the way, as described in aspire docs

[davidfowl]

azd is using dotnet run which uses the default launch profile, which sets the apphost environment to "Development". Why not use the ExecutionContext.IsPublishMode to determine the env?

[dluc]

Thanks for the pointers. So the problem is not the env var in the system (azd deploy doesn't seem to be affected by the shell vars), but the env var in the profile. IMO that's a bit confusing, usually env vars in the profile do not affect the state of cloud deployments, I guess this is an exception? Anyway, removing the var from the profile fixed the issue.

I usually set the env var in .NET apps profile in order to use appsettings.Development.json - a file which is not checked into repos - so for example I could set connection strings in here and other local settings, overriding the defaults in appsettings.json. I'll try overriding appsettings using env vars in the profile, hopefully that works.

[aaronpowell]

azd is using dotnet run which uses the default launch profile, which sets the apphost environment to "Development". Why not use the ExecutionContext.IsPublishMode to determine the env?

I assumed it was using the configuration provided to dotnet, not launch profiles.

The reason it is the way it is was so you could do -c Debug or -c Release depending on the build mode you wanted for the deployment.

If we were to use IsPublishMode, how would you publish a debug build?

[dluc]

Looks like "ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT": "Development" can't be removed from Aspire.AppHost launchsettings profiles, because projects would start in Production mode when working locally, and fail to start due to missing connection strings, managed identities, etc. (see below)

To fix NODE_ENV app env var in prod, I added this code to the node.js resource definition:

if (builder.ExecutionContext.IsPublishMode)
{
    resource.WithEnvironment("NODE_ENV", "production");
}

Local errors when ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT is not set, and the env defaults to Prod:

on services having a reference:

2025-04-04T14:49:30
Failed to apply environment variable 'ConnectionStrings__blobs-storage'. A dependency may have failed to start.
Aspire.Hosting.Azure.AzureProvisioner+MissingConfigurationException: An Azure subscription id is required. Set the Azure:SubscriptionId configuration value.
at Aspire.Hosting.Azure.AzureProvisioner.GetProvisioningContextAsync(Lazy`1 userSecretsLazy, CancellationToken cancellationToken) in /_/src/Aspire.Hosting.Azure/Provisioning/Provisioners/AzureProvisioner.cs:line 400

etc.