Add a multiline environment variable to Vercel (or Heroku)

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One of the common issues when deploying a React project with firebase-admin is that a secret environment variable with a newline (\n) character will cause a build error.

Assume that the text below is a simplified version of your firebase-admin private key.

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
abcde
fghij
klmno
pqrs=
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

In a .env file, this would be represented as:

MY_PRIVATE_KEY="-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nabcde\nfghij\nklmno\npqrs=\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n"

What happens when you add a secret environment variable containing your private key value - "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nabcde\nfghij\nklmno\npqrs=\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n" and redeploy?

Vercel on Ye Joo Park's Blog

Add a multiline environment variable to Vercel (or Heroku)