Question

MONGO_URI is undefined in the droplet (Ubuntu 20.04)

I am trying to deploy my MERN app to a Digital Ocean droplet(Ubuntu server 20.04). I cloned my GitHub repo, ran npm i in order to install the packages. Then when I started the server using npm start, I am getting an error thats says the MONGO_URI connection string is undefined. However, in my local machine when I console.log process.env.MONGO_URI, I am getting the string. Also in the droplet, I tried the command: export MONGO_URI=the_connection_string. Even then I get the same error. You can see the details of the error if you follow my stack overflow question on the same issue: https://stackoverflow.com/q/66849235/9409877. What am I doing wrong?

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pgcim14hemant • March 30, 2021
Accepted Answer

I solved the problem. I had put the .env file in .gitignore. Therefore .env file was not available in the droplet. I created a .env file using vim and now everything works fine.

eugenehp • March 29, 2021

Hey, @pgcim14hemant I would add https://www.npmjs.com/package/dotenv to your packages and configured the local environment variable.

npm install dotenv
touch .env
echo MONGO_URI=PASTE_YOUR_URI_HERE >> .env

In your code add this:

require('dotenv').config