Having looked into this, the issue appears to be in your application code or configuration rather than the Railway platform itself, which puts it outside what Railway support can resolve directly.

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Environment variables not injecting into Node.js container despite being configured

Service: weekly-tax-app (Node.js/Express, Pavak01/weekly-tax-app)

Project: gracious-serenity

Environment: production

ISSUE: Environment variables configured in Railway service config are not reaching process.env at runtime.

EVIDENCE:

• Service config shows 16 variables set (DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET, AWS_*, etc.)

• Deployment succeeds

• Container starts and logs "Backend running on port 8080"

• Diagnostic logs show:

  PORT: 8080 ✅

  DATABASE_URL: undefined ❌

  All env keys: [] ❌ (ZERO custom env vars reach container)

TRIED:

• Hardcoded strings
• Reference variables (${{ Postgres.DATABASE_URL }})
• Multiple redeploys
• Fresh builds
• Removed/re-added all variables

Latest deployment: dcbc0598-cdcf-47bc-b05f-43e1c879b919

Repo: https://github.com/Pavak01/weekly-tax-app (public)

PORT works, so env injection works. But custom variables don't. Why would DATABASE_URL be undefined when it's explicitly set in service config?

Are you using turborepo?

Project: gracious-serenity (c19fa85f-43c6-4f33-8cdd-d3e5abadcf13)

Service: weekly-tax-app

Environment: production

Deployment: a02fcc73-aecd-41f4-abf2-ad65482390e5

ISSUE: Environment variables configured in the service are NOT being injected into the container, even though they exist in the service config.

EVIDENCE:

Diagnostic logging shows process.env at startup contains:

• Total env var count: 41
• Railway-provided vars: ✅ ALL PRESENT (RAILWAY_*, PORT, NODE_ENV, PATH, HOME, etc.)
• Service-configured vars: ❌ COMPLETELY MISSING (DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET, AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME, AWS_ENDPOINT_URL, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, TWO_FACTOR_ENCRYPTION_KEY, PASSWORD_RESET_TTL_MINUTES, RECEIPTS_S3_FORCE_PATH_STYLE, TWO_FACTOR_CHALLENGE_TTL_MINUTES, ADMIN_EMAILS, ALLOWED_ORIGINS, RULE_PUBLISH_SECRET)

Service config shows all 15+ variables are SET via API getServiceConfigTool (returned as ), but they don't reach process.env.

WHAT WAS TRIED:

✅ Hardcoded string values

✅ Reference variables (${{ Postgres.DATABASE_URL }})

✅ Multiple redeploys

✅ Removed dotenv/config (not the issue)

✅ Added 41 env vars are confirmed in container, but 0 of them are the configured service variables

Actual env var list present: CI, HOME, HOSTNAME, MISE_CACHE_DIR, MISE_CONFIG_DIR, MISE_DATA_DIR, MISE_INSTALLS_DIR, MISE_SHIMS_DIR, NODE_ENV, NPM_CONFIG_FETCH_RETRIES, NPM_CONFIG_FUND, NPM_CONFIG_PRODUCTION, NPM_CONFIG_UPDATE_NOTIFIER, PATH, PORT, PWD, RAILPACK_BUILT_AT, RAILPACK_VERSION, RAILWAY_BETA_ENABLE_RUNTIME_V2, RAILWAY_DEPLOYMENT_ID, RAILWAY_ENVIRONMENT, RAILWAY_ENVIRONMENT_ID, RAILWAY_ENVIRONMENT_NAME, RAILWAY_GIT_AUTHOR, RAILWAY_GIT_BRANCH, RAILWAY_GIT_COMMIT_MESSAGE, RAILWAY_GIT_COMMIT_SHA, RAILWAY_GIT_REPO_NAME, RAILWAY_GIT_REPO_OWNER, RAILWAY_PRIVATE_DOMAIN, RAILWAY_PROJECT_ID, RAILWAY_PROJECT_NAME, RAILWAY_REPLICA_ID, RAILWAY_REPLICA_REGION, RAILWAY_SERVICE_ID, RAILWAY_SERVICE_NAME, RAILWAY_SNAPSHOT_ID, SHLVL, _, __MISE_DIFF, __MISE_SHIM

NONE of the configured DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET, or AWS_ variables are present.*

This is a critical blocker. The service's own configured environment variables are not being passed to the running container, while Railway-provided variables work fine.

Just to confirm; have you applied changes after adding the env variables?

yes

????