How to use environment variables in Github Page? - reactjs

Question

I want to deploy my create-react-app project to GitHub Pages. But I have a few secret keys. How can I manage these keys inside my React app?

Answer 1

Edited June 2020
Reference #alicia-jasmine
"React is purely a front-end framework. Everything accessible to React (even if you embed it through a build step) will later be visible in the front-end code and someone relatively basic to find. To really keep them secret you MUST have something server side!"
The following answer will actually expose the key in the gh-page branch on GitHub, also the keys will be accessible through the network tab in the developer console.
Original Answer
I'm also using create-react-app, and I found that this can be done by customizing your CI script with GitHub secret settings. (After the setting, you can use environment variables like this in your project.)
const apiKey = process.env.REACT_APP_APIKey
const apiSecret = process.env.REACT_APP_APISecret
To add a secret to your repository, go to your repository's Setting > Secrets, click on Add a new secret. In the screenshot below, I added 2 env variables: REACT_APP_APIKey and REACT_APP_APISecret.
Notice: All the environment variable you want to access with create-react-app need to be prefixed with REACT_APP.
After you have your secret ready, you can take a look at this post, it's about how to add your own Action upon push.
To setup your action script, go to your repository > Actions, an click on Setup workflow your self, and paste in the script provided in the post or take a look at mine script below.
I use the following script to access the 2 environment variables I set on GitHub secret. (You can access the secret you set in the script by ${{ secrets.REACT_APP_APIKey }}.)
name: CI
on:
push:
branches:
- master
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout#v1
- name: Build
run: |
npm install
npm run-script build
env:
REACT_APP_APIKey: ${{ secrets.REACT_APP_APIKey }}
REACT_APP_APISecret: ${{ secrets.REACT_APP_APISecret }}
- name: Deploy
uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action#releases/v3
with:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
BRANCH: gh-pages
FOLDER: build
After you setup the script, the action will be triggered by any push to master
branch. After you push any commits, you can take a look at the deployment status at actions status.
You can see how hard it is for me to figure it out... so many fail attempts lol. Anyway, hope this will help :)

Answer 2

name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
on:
push:
branches:
- master
jobs:
build-and-deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout#v1
- name: Build
run: |
npm install
npm run-script build
env:
REACT_APP_INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.REACT_APP_INSTAGRAM_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
REACT_APP_SMTP_SECURE_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.REACT_APP_SMTP_SECURE_TOKEN }}
- name: Deploy
uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action#releases/v3
with:
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN_KEY }}
BRANCH: gh-pages
FOLDER: dist
You can use like this to add your environment variables from GitHub secrets. This solved my problem.

Answer 3

I support this answer (above)
But I advice to update the gh-pages YML to version 4
Also take a look at environment variables solution because i spent hours to find out the solution
- name: Deploy
uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action#4.0.0
with:
branch: gh-pages
folder: front-app/dist

Answer 4

To use environment variables, the general approach which is followed is to:
Not expose them to the public
Keep it local at the time of development/production and ignore in .gitignore file.
Make the
static build out of your application Then deploy it to either github
pages or any other static website host.
While working with create-react-app you have their benefits, you can create .env in your root folder.
The structure for the .env file should follow below key-value structure:-
REACT_APP_SECRET_CODE1=dev123
REACT_APP_SECRET_CODE2=prod456
Keys in the file should be prefixed with REACT_APP and you can use these keys to access the variable in your application. For eg. process.env.REACT_APP_SECRET_CODE, this will have the value dev123

Answer 5

If they are truly secret, and so should not be in a repository, then there isn't a way to manage that with github-pages.
If you are okay with having them in a repository, then put them in .env and access via process.env

Answer 6

You can deploy your project on Heroku where you can set up your secret key.