Clone the repository and use enviroment variables

[fabiantorress]

Hi, someone has experience using the plugin-flex-ts-template-v2 repo with enviromental variables? I am newbie using Typescript and I try to use .env files in production but I am getting undefined. I just cloned the repo and ereased the features that I wasn't interested.
Specifically I want to use the chat-transfer feature and the process.env.FLEX_APP_SERVERLESS_FUNCTONS_DOMAIN variable is getting undefined. The variable is defined in my .env file.
Thanks in advanced.

[dremin]

Hi @fabiantorress! If you only need chat transfer, have you tried using the plugin library version instead (accessed via Flex UI > Admin > Plugins > Plugin library tab)? The plugin library version was derived from the template version, so it should be more-or-less the same.

If you'd like to go forward with using the template instead: You actually should not need to manually modify the .env files, as the template sets these automatically based on the items existing in your Twilio account. I would suggest following these steps to ensure success:

1. Remove all features except the one you want using these instructions. Then, push those changes to your repo.
2. Deploy the template using the instructions here. Note specifically on step 6, be sure to select the options that this is an initial deploy, and to deploy terraform. This ensures the chat transfer workflow gets created and automatically populated into the .env during deployment.
3. Now that you have deployed the template, we can make it work locally as well. If you have not tried running locally yet, follow these directions. Otherwise, if you have already installed locally, you can run npm run postinstall -- --overwrite and the template scripting will update your .env files with the appropriate values.

If you have more questions about how the .env files work and how configuration is managed in the template in general, this docs page describes how it all works.

I hope this helps!

[dremin]

@fabiantorress In that case, you should be able to run the GitHub Actions deploy script, with terraform disabled, and the .env will automatically populate correctly for the selected environment.

[fabiantorress]

@dremin I understand, but to be clear, there is no way I can use .env files and based on my stage project link the corresponding env file with stage? Like this: https://www.twilio.com/es-mx/docs/flex/developer/plugins/environment-variables . I already have done this with my custom plugins but using Javascript, not Typescript.

[dremin]

@fabiantorress You can use .env files like any other plugin, however, we recommend using other facilities for configuration, as .env files require a re-deployment to modify.

[fabiantorress]

I didn't fix the undefined serverless_functions_domain that I was getting, but I got it to work using the Flex UI Configuration as the documentation suggested. Thanks @dremin !