I have built an Android application using Expo v52 with React Native and now I want to generate a preview APK. In my project, I use an environment variable like: EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://192.168.57.53:3000/api . I want to include this in the APK such that I can update it later without rebuilding the entire app. Is there a way to change it post-build in a preview APK for local testing? like there is option in react website deployment, we set key.
Currently, I have defined EXPO_PUBLIC_API_URL in the .env file, but I read that it can also be specified in eas.json. Is there a way to use EAS secrets to make this variable dynamic?
I haven't built any APK for React Native Expo yet, so please help. I couldn’t find any relevant documentation on this.
If you want to use environment variables inside your eas.json file, you will need to add env objects inside development, preview & production. This is my eas.json for example.
{
...
"build": {
"development": {
"developmentClient": true,
"distribution": "internal",
"ios": {
"simulator": true
},
"env": {
"API_URL": "https://www.google.com/"
},
...
},
"preview": {
"distribution": "internal",
"ios": {
"simulator": true
},
"android": {
"buildType": "apk"
},
"env": {
"API_URL": "https://www.facebook.com/"
},
...
},
"production": {
"env": {
"API_URL": "https://www.stackoverflow.com/"
}
...
}
},
"submit": {
"production": {}
}
}