How to get the base url variable on a deployed Heroku node app
Backend
This checks if you are in production or development mode and assigns the according url depending on the mode.
const production = 'https://examplePage.com';
const development = 'http://localhost:3000/';
const url = (process.env.NODE_ENV ? production : development);
Explanation:
process.env.NODE_ENV
will resolve to undefined
if you are running on localhost production mode. And return production
if you have deployed the app production mode.
Note: just because you have deployed the app doesn't necessarily mean you have changed the NODE_ENV
Frontend
Make use of the javascript window to extract the url
const url = window.location.origin;
You can use Base URL in JavaScript
// This article: // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21246818/how-to-get-the-base-url-in-javascript
var base_url = window.location.origin; // "http://stackoverflow.com"
var host = window.location.host; // stackoverflow.com
var pathArray = window.location.pathname.split( '/' ); // ["", "questions", "21246818", "how-to-get-the-base-url-in-javascript"]