What is the method to dynamically set the API server URL in a React application during deployment?

Frontend and Backend Development
1

I am new to React and need guidance on deploying my front-end application. The app will be served statically from cloud platforms like S3 or Google Cloud Storage, and it interacts with multiple API servers located in the cloud. While developing, I might be using local or testing server URLs. How can I set up reusable API server URLs for different environments such as development, staging, and production?

Solution: I utilized various suggestions and opted for:

  • Creating .env.production and .env.development files to define the variable API_ENDPOINT = 'host'
  • Leveraging create-react-app’s settings to access this in my code as process.env.API_ENDPOINT.

Although this practice slightly contradicts 12 Factor App principles by including environment variables in version control, it serves my current needs.

2

Ever thought about using a runtime config file or even fetching the config from a server during initialization? This way, you can switch URLs by just deploying a different config file, no codebase change needed! What challenges might arise doing it that way? Curious to know your thoughts!

3

One effective approach is to use a config.json file distributed with your build. Once your React app initializes, it can fetch this file to get dynamic configuration options, including API server URLs. This method ensures that you don’t need to rebuild your app when server endpoints change; you just update the configuration file. Additionally, this setup allows you more flexibility in managing environment-specific settings without modifying the source code or redeploying the entire application.