How to set ASP.NET 5 environment variables on production environment

Question

In Visual Studio 2015 you set the following variable in project properties: ASPNET_ENV. If you set it to development then you can use:

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
{
    if (env.IsDevelopment())
    {
        app.UseErrorPage();
    }
 }

IsDevelopment method will check ASPNET_ENV environment variable. Now this is all good on development while you are in Visual Studio 2015. When you publish the web application to IIS on a production server how can you set the value for ASPNET_ENV?

My server is Windows Server 2012

possible duplicate of [Asp.net 5 publish to IIS, setting ASPNET\_ENV Variables](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31049152/asp-net-5-publish-to-iis-setting-aspnet-env-variables) — Amit, Aug 30 '15 at 22:50
Take a look at the following: http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/fundamentals/environments.html -- in particular, pay attention to the NOTE that indicates that web server needs to be restarted for changes in this area to take effect. — David Tansey, Aug 30 '15 at 22:54
@Amit it is not because the answer given their doesn't make sense — Sul Aga, Aug 30 '15 at 22:59
@DavidTansey there is no mention in the document on how to do it? where to set the variable? — Sul Aga, Aug 30 '15 at 23:00

Muhammad Rehan Saeed · Answer 1 · 2016-07-01T07:37:47.817

8

This is how to set the environment variable on Windows:

On your server, right click 'Computer' or 'My Computer' and click on 'Properties'.
Go to 'Advanced System Settings'.
Click on 'Environment Variables' in the Advanced tab.
Add a new System Variable with the name ASPNET_ENV (RC1) or ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT (RC2, RTM and Above) and a value of Production, Staging, Development or whatever you want.
A reboot of your site may be required.

See also this answer for how to read the environment variable from gulpfile.js.

edited Jul 01 '16 at 07:37

answered Sep 01 '15 at 08:12

Muhammad Rehan Saeed

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As of RC1, environment variable was changed to Hosting:Environment. – Grady Werner Nov 24 '15 at 20:27
@GradyWerner See https://github.com/aspnet/Docs/issues/706#issuecomment-160450913 – Muhammad Rehan Saeed Nov 29 '15 at 19:54
A reboot to put a new System envrionment variable ?? is this true ? – DonDon Jul 01 '16 at 00:31
@DonDon I meant a reboot of the site. I haven't tested. I've updated the answer to clarify. – Muhammad Rehan Saeed Jul 01 '16 at 07:38
2

Had to reboot the machine to take the changes in effect. – Sundeep Aug 12 '16 at 15:29
As noted in the answer, RC2 and later uses ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT (without the colon) – Greg Gum Sep 07 '16 at 23:48

JOSEFtw · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-24T07:27:38.537

8

If you are using IIS to host your application, it's possible to set the environment variables in your web.configfile like this:

<aspNetCore processPath="%LAUNCHER_PATH%" arguments="%LAUNCHER_ARGS%" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" forwardWindowsAuthToken="false">
    <environmentVariables>
        <environmentVariable name="ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT" value="QA" />
        <environmentVariable name="AnotherVariable" value="My Value" />
    </environmentVariables>
</aspNetCore>

edited Nov 24 '16 at 07:27

answered Oct 06 '16 at 18:56

JOSEFtw

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Please correct the indentation in your markdown so the closing tag (``) is included as code, and the `environmentVariables` subsection is nicely indented. I would have done it myself but it doesn't count as sufficient characters to allow the edit. – Eric Lease Nov 23 '16 at 20:41

How to set ASP.NET 5 environment variables on production environment

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