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Code Along: Using Environment Variables with Parcel

Together we’ll walk through the process of using Parcel to bundle a static application that needs to secure sensitive credentials

Instructions

1. Access your Giphy API project from a class session earlier in the course

Using your operating system’s finder / explorer application, copy your Giphy Search API application (project name: giphy-search-api) application an earlier lesson to your lesson_17 folder
- If you do not have a working version of giphy-search-api you can clone down a working version here
- If you choose this option, make sure you add your Giphy API Key to app.js where you see the following line of code:
```
const apiKey = 'ADD_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE'
```

2. Install Parcel

We’ll be following the set up instructions found here: https://parceljs.org/getting_started.html

In the terminal, run the following command to install parcel globally
```
$ npm install -g parcel-bundler
```

3. Create a `package.json` file inside your project folder

While inside your project folder, run the following command to create a package.json file
```
$ npm init -y
```

4. Run Parcel development server

Parcel has a development server built in, which will automatically rebuild your app as you change files and supports hot module replacement for fast development

Run the following command from the command line to start parcel’s local development server:
```
$ parcel index.html
```
Now open your browser and navigate to http:localhost:1234
Test the app and confirm that it’s fully functional

5. Create `.env` file

Parcel uses the dotenv to support loading environment variables from .env files (see docs)

This means we dot not have to explicitly install dotenv since parcel already has it installed as a dependency. However, we still need to the create the .env file.

Run the following command from within the project folder
```
$ touch .env.local
```
Parcel has a specific way it wants developers to set up .env files; .env.local is communicates to Parcel that these environment variables should be used “locally” (i.e. on your computer) (see docs)

6. Create and use Environment Variables to secure your API key

Next, we’re going to to create an Environment Variable that will represent our app’s Giphy API key

Open .env.local in your text editor and the following snippet:
```
GIPHY_API_KEY=add_your_api_key_here
```
- Replace add_your_api_key_here with your actual Giphy API key
Next, update app.js to replace your hardcoded API key process.env.GIPHY_API_KEY

Here’s what search() should look like after the update in app.js:

      function search (searchTerm) {
        const url = 'https://api.giphy.com/v1/gifs/search'
        const apiKey = process.env.GIPHY_API_KEY // <- this line was updated

        $.ajax({
          url: url,
          type: 'GET',
          data: { q: searchTerm, limit: 50, api_key: apiKey }
        })
        .done((response) => {
          // execute this function if request is successful
          console.log(response)
          displayResults(response.data)
        })
        .fail(() => {
          // execute this function if request fails
          console.log('error occurred')
        })
      }
    })

7. Restart the Parcel development server

Shut down the Parcel server (from your command line) using Ctrl-C
Restart the Parcel local development server:
```
$ parcel index.html
```
Now open your browser and navigate to http:localhost:1234
Confirm that the app remains fully functional with the use of the Environment Variable

8. Create a `.gitignore` file to prevent `.env.local` from being included in your git repository

Git allows developers to specify files that they do not want to be tracked and committed to their git repository. These files will essentially be ignored by git

We accomplish this by creating a .gitignore file and adding the path of any files that we’d like to be ignored

Create a .gitignore file
```
$ touch .gitignore
```
Open .gitignore in your editor and add the following:
```
.env.local
/node_modules
```

Here we are adding .env.local to prevent our secure credentials from tracked. We’ve also followed the best practice of ignoring the /node_modules directory

Congrats!

You’ve successfully set up a development environment for your front-end application that the use of Environment Variables to secure your sensitive credentials

Important: Going forward, you will need to run parcel index.html so your app will be able handle Environment Variables without any issues

If you attempt to use the app without running parcel index.html you will receive the error depicted in the image below:

Front-end websites that are not running on Node-based server cannot reference the process object; this is the benefit of using a bundler like Parcel, it provides us with a local web server

Code Along: Using Environment Variables with Parcel