Environment Variables in Expo using Release Channels

Photo by Sergii Bozhko on Unsplash Photo by Sergii Bozhko on Unsplash

Expo has recently released Release Channels that allow you to deploy, rollback and test your app with different users by just adding the --release-channel flag on the publish command.

One of my favorite things about Release Channels is the ability to define pseudo environment variables so I can easily switch between dev, staging & prod.

Here’s how I do it:

An example of handling environment variables in Expo using Release Channels

The reason why I use indexOf is because I’ll release new versions of my app based on the package.json version. That way I keep things sync’d up across the entire Orchard ecosystem:

exp publish --release-channel staging-1.20.1
exp publish --release-channel staging-1.21.0

exp publish --release-channel prod-2.0.0

Notes:

In the current release of Expo v24, the releaseChannel key DOES NOT show up in dev mode.
In future releases, the releaseChannel key may show up as undefined. DO NOT quote me on this, its just speculation.