Basic Node and Express - Use the .env File test is failing

Curriculum Help
1

Tell us what’s happening:

when I submit the link for my code the test fails, but my code is doing exactly what the assignment asks not sure what is wrong

Your code so far

app.get('/json',(req, res)=> res.json({"message": response()}))

/** 6) Use the .env file to configure the app */
 const response = ()=>{
   let resp = "Hello json"
 if (process.env.MESSAGE_STYLE === 'uppercase'){
  return resp = resp.toUpperCase();
 }else {
  return response = "Hello World";
}

here is a link to the gitch code

Your browser information:

User Agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.97 Safari/537.36.

Challenge: undefined

Link to the challenge:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/basic-node-and-express/use-the-.env-file

2

Hello!

Could You post a link to Your glitch code?

3

here the link to my glitch code https://glitch.com/edit/#!/global-brisket

4

You’re not using the file. The challenge asks You to create a MESSAGE_STYLE variable, which must be on the .env file.

# Contents of the .env file
# Fill the following:
MESSAGE_STYLE=
5

I am using the env file though
on line 34 inside my if statement I cal process.env also there is an env file located underneath the views folder with the variable assigned. I didn’t see any env files when I started this assignment so I created my own. Is there another one somewhere that I should use?

6

Yes, You’re “using” the file, but it’s empty :slight_smile:.

The .env file is used to setup the environment of the project, what’s going to be used to, for example, access the database (storing secrets/passwords and users). Every developer must create their own .env files for a NodeJS app, otherwise process.env will try to find the variables from the current environment (the shell, the windows environment variables, etc.). So, this:

is what You had to do :slight_smile:.

Now, to solve the challenge, simply add the text:

# .env file
MESSAGE_STYLE=uppercase
8

That makes sense :sweat_smile:. Thanks for the clarification.

9

but isn’t my env file in the root?

10

Yes, it’s!

Could You write this right after the const response, like this:

** 6) Use the .env file to configure the app */
 const response = ()=>{
   let resp = "Hello json"
 if (process.env.MESSAGE_STYLE === 'uppercase'){
  return resp = resp.toUpperCase();
 }else {
  return resp = "Hello World";
}
 }
console.log(response())

Check the console logs (on glitch, on the left, click Tools -> Logs). If You see the string HELLO JSON then I don’t know why it doesn’t work xD.

12

true that was an unnecessary step, but even when that is removed the test still fails

14

the variable containing hello json? I tried that and that does not work either

16

I just look at your latest response function (below).

 const response = ()=>{
   let resp = " "
 if (process.env.MESSAGE_STYLE === 'uppercase'){
  return resp = resp.toUpperCase();
 }else{
   return resp = "Hello json";
 }
 }

What value do you think will get returned if process.env.MESSAGE_STYLE is uppercase?

17

I forgot to change that when I updated the code, but it’s fixed now and the test still fail

18

I am starting to think that freecode camp is testing for a very specific solution and that even though mine works it’s not the solution that they are looking for

20

2019-11-07%20(3)
2019-11-07%20(3)1366×768 154 KB

21

turns out I was submitting the wrong link lol sorry and thanks for the help