React Native with Configu

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1. The problem

When developing a React Native app, you typically need to manage configurations for various environments, like development, testing, and production. You may also need to adjust configurations for different app features or components, which can be time-consuming and error-prone if done manually. Configu helps streamline environment-based configuration in a React Native app, reducing the potential for manual errors. This guide will demonstrate how to use Configu to manage configurations for your React Native app.

Let’s begin by creating a simple Expo project and introduce environment variables to our React Native app by following the “Environment variables in Expo” guide.

You should now have the following .env file:

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://staging.example.com
EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=abc123

And the following component that uses it:

import { Button } from 'react-native';

function Post() {
  const apiUrl = process.env.EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL;

  async function onPress() {
    await fetch(apiUrl, { ... })
  }

  return <Button onPress={onPress} title="Post" />;
}

Let’s enrich the .env file with more environment variables:

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://staging.api.example.com
EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=abc123
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=true
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=blue

• EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED: A feature flag that determines whether the post button is enabled.
• EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR: The color of the post button.

And use them in our component:

import { Button } from 'react-native';

export function Post() {
  const apiUrl = process.env.EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL ?? 'https://example.com/api';

  if (process.env.EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED !== 'true') return null;

  async function onPress() {
    await fetch(apiUrl, { ... });
  }

  return <Button onPress={onPress} title="Post" color={process.env.EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR} />;
}

Now whenever we want to change the environment variables based on the environment we need we have to manually change the .env file. This is not a good practice and can lead to errors. This is where Configu comes in, you can store all your configurations in one place and use the Configu CLI to export the configurations to your .env file based on the environment you are working on. In the next steps we will show you how to do this.

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2. Install Configu CLI

curl https://files.configu.com/cli/install.sh | sh

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3. Create schema declaration

Run the following command which will create a ConfigSchema using the .env file you created earlier and set the values as defaults.

configu init --import .env --defaults --name expo

Now you should have a expo.cfgu.json file in your project directory with the following content:

{
  "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL": {
    "default": "https://staging.api.example.com"
  },
  "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY": {
    "default": "abc123"
  },
  "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED": {
    "default": "true"
  },
  "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR": {
    "default": "blue"
  }
}

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4. Connect to Configu ConfigStore

You may now choose one of the many ConfigStore integrations that are available as your source of configurations for your React Native app. In this guide, we will use the Configu ConfigStore our chosen ConfigStore.

configu login

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5. Upsert values

Now that you have connected to the ConfigStore, you can upsert the configuration values for the different environments using the Configu CLI.

You can upsert fallback configurations for each environment by upserting to the root set and adding environment specific configurations by upserting to the environment as such:

configu upsert \
  --store 'configu' --set '' --schema './expo.cfgu.json' \
  -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=false" -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=abc123" -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=blue" \
&& configu upsert \
  --store 'configu' --set 'development' --schema './expo.cfgu.json' \
  -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://dev.api.example.com" -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=red" -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=true" \
&& configu upsert \
  --store 'configu' --set 'staging' --schema './expo.cfgu.json' \
  -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://staging.api.example.com" -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=true" \
&& configu upsert \
  --store 'configu' --set 'production' --schema './expo.cfgu.json' \
  -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://api.example.com" -c "EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=prod123" "EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=green"

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6. Export and use values from Configu in your React Native app

configu eval \
  --store 'configu' --set 'development' --schema './expo.cfgu.json' \
| configu export \
  --format "Dotenv" \
> ".env"

As a result, you will get a .env file with the configurations declared in the “expo” ConfigSchema and their values from the “development” ConfigSet.

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://dev.api.example.com
EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=abc123
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=true
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=red

Evaluating and exporting from the “staging” and “production” ConfigSets will result in .env files with the configurations for those environments.

Staging:

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://staging.api.example.com
EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=abc123
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=true
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=blue

Production:

EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://api.example.com
EXPO_PUBLIC_API_KEY=prod123
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_ENABLED=false
EXPO_PUBLIC_POST_BUTTON_COLOR=green

That’s it! You can reload your app and see the changes in the .env file reflected in your React Native app. If you use a framework other than Expo, you can refer to the documentation of that framework to learn how to use environment variables.