Hey there! We've found the following might help you get unblocked faster:

• 🧵 Environment Variables Silently Dropped/Not Injected

• 🧵 Environment Variables Not Loading in Deployment

• 🧵 Environment variables not being injected into service

• 🧵 Environment variables not injected

If you find the answer from one of these, please let us know by solving the thread!

For the record: I have committed no mistypings, runs perfectly locally, but variables are not pulled in for some reason.

When I do 'railway variables' via CLI i get the variables correctly..

Hey there! We had something similar happen recently.
Since setting the variables have you saved them?
On that, have you redeployed the service after saving the new variables?

Yes to both questions. That's why I am quite confused.

Always love to clear up the given simple things!
So in your script if you log process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY you are getting a 401 error?
Can you try printing the value to console of that variable?

Yes, I get 'undefined'.

Yes, I get 'undefined'.

For all my variables, not just this one.

Okay great that clears things up more!
For a bit more cursory info, are you using nixpacks/railpacks or a Dockerfile?

Dockerfile in a monorepo, one for backend and one for frontend, two different railway services:

be :

FROM python:3.12-slim

WORKDIR /app

COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

COPY app ./app

CMD ["sh", "-c", "python -m uvicorn app.api.main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port ${PORT:-8080}"]

fe:

FROM node:18-alpine

WORKDIR /app

COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci

COPY . .
RUN npm run build

CMD ["sh", "-c", "npm start -- --port ${PORT:-8080} --hostname 0.0.0.0"]

The builds and deployments are successful, I set it up with git root directories for each service.

Thank you so much! Doing some poking around now

okay thanks a lot, let me know!

https://nextjs.org/docs/14/app/building-your-application/configuring/environment-variables
so I did find some things about env variables with nextjs.
Did you follow this where you declare in next conf the env variables it would be referencing? That could be it but I'm not entirely sure.

just tried implementing this like this:

/** @type {import('next').NextConfig} */
const nextConfig = {
  output: "standalone",
  env: {
    NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL,
    NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY,
  },
};

module.exports = nextConfig;

in a next.config.js file, re-deployed, but still getting that 401 issue :(

So 401 is unauthorized.
I'm a bit confused as to why the env variables are causing a 401 (other then an undefined value mismatching provided value).
If we're just talking about the value of the NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL/KEY is that being propagated? As in, printing to console is the value undefined?

yes exactly, in console it says exactly 'undefined', printed. It's a 401 because it's an api that requires a key to call. I am calling it in my frontend and it's returning 401 error. headers are empty for x-api-key .

In local it works as expected, no issues.

Okay wonderful thanks for clarifying!
The other thing I can think is that during the build cycle this isnt properly passing the variables in.
https://docs.railway.com/guides/dockerfiles#using-variables-at-build-time
Looks like you need to declare them in your Dockerfile like:
ARG NEXT_PUBLIC_API_KEY etc.

are you using docker by chance? I had to use ARG to copy over my env variables to the container.

He is! Just advised to use ARG so we'll see if that fixes it

I just deployed a custom docker this morning. it was a pita. https://github.com/profullstack/qryptchat-web/blob/master/Dockerfile

Wow that is complex! Does look like ARG will fix that then. Wish next was easier to deal with

It worked!! thanks a lot

Happy I could help!
Noted for the future too.