Use the .env File Challenge Issue

For more coverage, I am opening this here:

Challenge: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn/apis-and-microservices/basic-node-and-express/use-the--env-file

As of <04/02/2021, a change has caused the above mentioned lesson to be uncompletable.

Error: SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0 at JSON.parse (<anonymous>) at /home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:91:26

The error in full:

Error

SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
    at JSON.parse (<anonymous>)
    at /home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:91:26
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:33:7)
    at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:315:20)
    at IncomingMessage.Readable.read (_stream_readable.js:505:10)
    at flow (_stream_readable.js:1005:34)
    at resume_ (_stream_readable.js:986:3)
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:84:21)
SyntaxError: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 0
    at JSON.parse (<anonymous>)
    at /home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:99:28
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:33:7)
    at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:315:20)
    at IncomingMessage.Readable.read (_stream_readable.js:505:10)
    at flow (_stream_readable.js:1005:34)
    at resume_ (_stream_readable.js:986:3)
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:84:21)
_http_outgoing.js:518
    throw new ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT('set');
    ^

Error [ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT]: Cannot set headers after they are sent to the client
    at ServerResponse.setHeader (_http_outgoing.js:518:11)
    at ServerResponse.header (/home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/express/lib/response.js:771:10)
    at ServerResponse.send (/home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/express/lib/response.js:170:12)
    at ServerResponse.json (/home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/express/lib/response.js:267:15)
    at /home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:108:15
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/home/runner/boilerplate-express-2/node_modules/fcc-express-bground/index.js:33:7)
    at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:315:20)
    at IncomingMessage.Readable.read (_stream_readable.js:505:10)
    at flow (_stream_readable.js:1005:34)
    at resume_ (_stream_readable.js:986:3) {
  code: 'ERR_HTTP_HEADERS_SENT'
}

If you encounter this, the best course of action is to skip the lesson, and continue with the curriculum.

As nothing obvious has changed on freeCodeCamp’s side, this is likely an issue on Repl.it’s side.

Current Debugged Steps

1. Tested code which previously used to pass - no longer passes
2. Downgraded express package - no effect
3. One user was able to pass, and the noticeable difference was their origin was not freecodecamp.org, when they submitted.
4. All manor of sending data via stringifying etc.

From forum post: https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/headers-error-in-env-challenge/444357

_P.S. Even though I have said there has been no change to the challenge, in the last few seconds (19:00 UTC) there has been a change pushed to main. Otherwise, our side has not changed in a way I can see which would affect this

[gikf]

I believe I’ve found what’s happening, although not fully sure why.

Long story short - request send from ie. /_api/use-env-vars to the relevant /json route uses http, what results in (repl.it?) trying to redirect to https. I don’t know how up to date this information is, but I’ve found posts that http.request doesn’t follow redirects on it own.

https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/fcc-express-bground-pkg/blob/master/index.js#L16

var selfCaller = function (path, req, res, cb, url) {
  var url = req.get('host').split(':');
  var port = url[1];
  url = url[0];
  var prot = req.protocol === 'https' ? https : http;
  var opts = {
    hostname: url,
    method: 'GET',
    path: path,
    port: port || 80,
    headers: {
      'User-Agent':
        'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/68.0.3440.106 Safari/537.36',
    },
  };
  var rq = prot.request(opts, function (r) {
(...)

Taking repl.it as example: req.host doesn’t contain port, so port is undefined and in the request will be always used 80. Second thing is that protocol in passed req is http. Changing prot to https and port to 443 makes everything work.

FWIW this is affecting also Basic Node and Express - Implement a Root-Level Request Logger Middleware and Basic Node and Express - Chain Middleware to Create a Time Server.

[ShaunSHamilton]

@JoshuaPelealu There is a temporary solution, just waiting to be QAed.