Use Cases

The aurelia-environment plugin is ideally suited for decoupling configuration properties of your application from the source code. For example, during the development phase, you are using development logging printing a lot of information. By relying on Continuous Integration and Delivery, the application is built automatically with each release commit to the VCS. The source code is bundled and configuration is included as is, most of the time with development configuration.

aurelia-environment allows to specify the configuration in an extra file. It is easily exchangeable depending on the deployment environment. It is even possible to simply generate it via cli.

The following sections list some example use cases on where to use the plugin

Use Case #1: API Endpoints

API Endpoints during development phase often differ from production endpoints. Normally, before deploying your app, you have to go through the code, and adjust the endpoint. Most of the time, there is only one place where to change it. However, you have to touch your code which makes it hard to e.g. use your nightly builds.

With the aurelia-environment plugin, you can specify your endpoint in an .env file which is decoupled from your code end exchangeable easily. See the following example.

Your main app configuration may look like this:

import {load} from 'aurelia-environment';

export function configure(aurelia) {
  load().then(() => {
    aurelia.use
      ...
      .plugin('aurelia-api', config => {
        config
          .registerEndpoint('api', env.API_ENDPOINT)
          .setDefaultEndpoint('api');
      });

    aurelia.start()
      .then(a => a.setRoot('app', document.body))
      .catch(() => {

      });
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error('Cannot load environment: ' + error.status + ' ' + error.statusText);
  });
}

As you can see, we only specify an environment file variable. No explicit endpoint. The endpoint itself is available in the .env file:

API_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:443/api/

Use Case #2: Application Logging

During development, you may prefer to have a more verbose logging than in production. Changing the settings in the code depending on the environment is an annoying task.

Instead, you can use an .env file to specify the logging.

See the following example for Aurelia. In your environment file, specify the logging as follows:

LOG_LEVEL=4 # Debug log level

Then, in the application configuration, use this environment property instead of hard coding the log level:

import {load} from 'aurelia-environment';
import {LogManager} from 'aurelia-framework';
import {ConsoleAppender} from 'aurelia-logging-console';

export function configure(aurelia) {
  load().then(() => {
    LogManager.addAppender(new ConsoleAppender());
    LogManager.setLevel(env.LOG_LEVEL);

    // aurelia config and bootstrapping ...
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error('Cannot load environment: ' + error.status + ' ' + error.statusText);
  });
}

In your production environment, you can now deploy the same code. You don't have to touch it again. The only thing you need to do is switching the log level in your environment file.

LOG_LEVEL=0 # No Logging