Setting environment variables in brigthscript (best practice)?
There is one thing that I've been wondering, where do people set their environment variables, and is there anything like best practices.
For example, we run two data environments, a dev and a production one, and it would make our lifeeasier if we could just have an environment file where we set DATA_SOURCE, and we can set it to something like
DATA_SOURCE="https://www.ourdomain.com/api/dev/v1.01"
Then in the code being able to do something like:
xfer.SetURL="$$DATA_SOURCE$$/get_content"
I looked at the manifest file, and there is a function (or option) called
uri_resolution_autosubWhich works this way, but it seems like a reserved word (or something like that).
Thank so very much, and sorry if this isn't the right place to ask.
There's at least a few different ways to run dev. vs. production environments.
One is you could write dynamic code to check roAppInfo IsDev(), which will return true for side-loaded channels, and then vary the runtime behavior based on that.E.g.
appInfo = CreateObject("roAppInfo") if appInfo.isDev() my_url = "http://something.dev" else my_url = "http://something.prod" end if
If you prefer to control behavior by changing a source file, you can use the manifest file for that.
One option is to use conditional compilation:https://developer.roku.com/en-gb/docs/references/brightscript/language/conditional-compilation.md
E.g. in the manifest file put:
bs_const=USE_DEV_SERVER=false
Then in .brs do:
#if USE_DEV_SERVER my_url = "http://whatever.dev" #else my_url = "http://whatever.prod" #end if
You can also put custom key entries in the manifest file, e.g.my_url=http://something.dev
vs.
my_url=http://something.prod
where you change the manifest file between runs.
Then in code, you can retrieve the configured value usingappInfo = CreateObject("roAppInfo") my_url = appInfo.GetValue("my_url")Note that although I mention it, I don't recommend this approach myself, and it can often cause confusion in development if you mix Roku OS-defined manifest attributes with your own custom entries.
A better approach is to just make your own configuration file, e.g. my_config.json, and read that from your Main function or wherever you need it.
Hope that helps.
