Using synthetics monitor CLI with .env

Elastic Observability Synthetics
1
  • ECK version: 8.14.0
  • FLEET version: 8.14.0
  • Synthetics Monitor agent version: 8.14.1
  • @elastic/synthetics CLI version: 1.12.1
  • Arch: on premise Kubernetes

Hello everyone!
I currently have a synthetic monitor running with CLI. The stages are working fine for me:

  • Create project
  • Develop the monitor (in .js and .ts)
  • Publish in Kibana

I wanted to set security criteria using a .env file to keep sensitive information

------
.env
-----
PRIVATE_LOCATIONS=oke-svc-prod
SCHEDULE=5
GOTO=https://www.elastic.co/es/import dotenv from 'dotenv';

------
elastic-env.journey.js
-----
import dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config({path: path.resolve(__dirname, './.env') });

and I encountered two scenarios:

Scenario 1:
Inside monitor.user, I can reference the .env file, and the variables load correctly. I validated this by publishing the changes to Kibana, and the variables loaded fine. The variables I used were PRIVATE_LOCATIONS and SCHEDULE.
However, when I tried to use the GOTO variable in page.goto(process.env.GOTO) , it failed. Sometimes it loads as empty, and other times it literally takes 'process.env.GOTO' as the value.

monitor.use({
    id: 'elastic-env',
    name : 'elastic-env',
    tags : [ 'DOC-DEVOPS' ],
    privateLocations: [process.env.PRIVATE_LOCATIONS],
    schedule: parseInt(process.env.SCHEDULE), // Convertir a número
    screenshot: 'on',
    enabled: true
  });
step('Go to https://www.elastic.co/es/', async () => {
    const gotoPage = process.env.GOTO;
    console.log('pageGoto: ', gotoPage);
    await page.goto(gotoPage);
  });

Scenario 2:
Due to the error when using GOTO in Scenario 1, I updated my synthetic agent deployment by loading the GOTO environment variable into the pod (I'm using K8s). With this change, the monitor worked.

elastic-agent@syntetics-agent-test-b95d84546-f7nqg:~$ env | grep GOTO
GOTO=https://www.elastic.co/es/
elastic-agent@syntetics-agent-test-b95d84546-f7nqg:~$

image

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My question is:
Is there a way to use an environment variable from a .env file that can be recognized and used when running npx @elastic/synthetics push?

2

Hi @Cristian_Pereyra,

You would need to pass in the ENV values as params which can then be consumed in journeys Configure Synthetics projects | Elastic Observability [8.15] | Elastic.

// synthetics.config.ts
export {
   params: {
      GOTO: "https://example.com"
   }
}

// journey.ts
journey('test', ( page, params ) => {
  step('Go to https://www.elastic.co/es/', async () => {
    console.log('pageGoto: ',  params.GOTO);
    await page.goto(params.GOTO);
  });
});

The reason for this is because the local environment is different from the remote locations where we run these monitors and these env values will not be defined.

Thanks,
Vignesh

3

thanks gor you intressing

i solved that using global.js file. In this solutions i have two advantages

  1. The sensitive information cannot seen in Synthetics Kibana
  2. i became independent from the environment because the env going to npm push
----
globals.js
----
const API_URL = 'https://www.elastic.co/es/';
const PRIVATE_LOCATIONS='oke-svc-prod'
const SCHEDULE=10

module.exports = {
  API_URL,
  PRIVATE_LOCATIONS,
  SCHEDULE
};

----
elastic-env.journey.js
----
const globals = require('./globals');
[..]
  console.log ("url: ", globals.API_URL)
[...]
  monitor.use({
    id: 'elastic-env',
    name : 'elastic-env',
    tags : [ 'DOC-DEVOPS' ],
    privateLocations: [globals.PRIVATE_LOCATIONS],
    schedule: parseInt(globals.SCHEDULE), // Convertir a número
    screenshot: 'on',
    enabled: true
  });
[..]

  step('Go to https://www.elastic.co/es/', async () => {
    await page.goto(globals.API_URL);
  });

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