Build command failing

[justuswitmer]

Hello, I am working on deploying an Observable App via GitHub Actions. I am using the example workflow given in the Observable docs. I can run everything locally. I can even run the npm run build command just fine, but when I run it via GitHub Actions it errors out. The issue seems to be with the data loader. I have a loader called get-locations.json.js, but the process is looking for get-locations.json and errors out when it can't find it. I assumed that during the build process get-locations.json was going to be generated, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Has anybody else run into this issue?

Here is the error from the GitHub Actions workflow:

TypeError: Invalid URL
    at new URL (node:internal/url:804:36)
    at parseUrl (file:///home/runner/work/sonnys-notebooks/sonnys-notebooks/node_modules/postgres/src/index.js:543:18)
    at parseOptions (file:///home/runner/work/sonnys-notebooks/sonnys-notebooks/node_modules/postgres/src/index.js:435:30)
    at Postgres (file:///home/runner/work/sonnys-notebooks/sonnys-notebooks/node_modules/postgres/src/index.js:50:19)
    at alfred (file:///home/runner/work/sonnys-notebooks/sonnys-notebooks/src/data/alfred.js:14:15)
    at file:///home/runner/work/sonnys-notebooks/sonnys-notebooks/src/data/get-locations.json.js:3:20
    at ModuleJob.run (node:internal/modules/esm/module_job:222:25)
    at async ModuleLoader.import (node:internal/modules/esm/loader:323:24)
    at async loadESM (node:internal/process/esm_loader:28:7)
    at async handleMainPromise (node:internal/modules/run_main:120:12) ***
  code: 'ERR_INVALID_URL',
  input: '***undefined:undefined/undefined'
***

Node.js v21.7.3
copy src/data/get-locations.json → load /data/get-locations.json → [missing] error in 57ms: loader exited with code 1

And here is my GitHub Actions workflow:

name: Deploy

on:
  push: {branches: [main]}

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
          cache: npm
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run build

[mythmon]

Can you share your data loader?

I suspect that the data loader, or one of the files it imports, is trying to use an environment variable that is not set in the GitHub workflow. You'll have to specify those in the workflow YAML file.

[justuswitmer]

Ahh, that makes sense. I have some database connection vars set in GitHub for a file that the data loader is using. I am also still new to GitHub Actions, so I bet I have that wrong.

Here is my data loader:

import { dbFunction } from "./dbFunction";

const data = await dbFunction(
  (sql) =>
    sql`SELECT *
FROM table
JOIN otherTable ON table = otherTable `
);

process.stdout.write(JSON.stringify(data));

And the file the data loader imports is this:

import "dotenv/config";
import postgres from "postgres";

const { PGDATABASE, PGHOST, PGPASSWORD, PGPORT, PGUSER } = process.env;

const dbUrl = `postgres://${PGUSER}:${PGPASSWORD}@${PGHOST}:${PGPORT}/${PGDATABASE}`;

if (! dbUrl) throw new Error("missing the db url");

// Warning: you may wish to specify a self-signed certificate rather than
// disabling certificate verification via rejectUnauthorized: false as below.
// See https://github.com/porsager/postgres/blob/master/README.md#ssl for more.
export async function dbFunction(f) {
  const sql = postgres(dbUrl);
  try {
    return await f(sql);
  } finally {
    await sql.end();
  }
}

How do I set env vars for GitHub to use?

[mythmon]

FYI you replied to the top level instead of replying to my comment. No big deal though.

The variables you set in the GitHub UI are available to the workflow file as, well, variables, but are not automatically injected into commands you run as environment variables. You can see how to expose secrets as environment variables in GitHub's docs. In short you'll need a env section in the npm run build step.

[justuswitmer]

Whoops. I was able to figure out how add the env variables. Needed to recreate my .env file in the build step and then delete it afterwards. Thanks for your help!