Heroku environmental variables require extra quotes around values

The environmental variables MICROPUB_PERMALINK_STYLE, MICROPUB_MEDIA_FILES_STYLE, MICROPUB_FILENAME_STYLE require quotes around the values in the Heroku configuration, though the rest don’t. This manifests as “app crashed” in the Heroku logs if you do not include them.

I’m guessing it’s because the values are parsed as JSON as their first step. It may be worth documenting these keys as requiring the extra quotes because it took me a little while to figure it out. At the very least, hopefully this issue is discoverable.

[zacwest]

I’m using the website to edit the environmental variables. I believe this is only required for values that are strings. If they are valid JSON, like that object in the screenshot, it’s able to parse it. Here’s an example of what I’m using that parses without issue:

If I take out the wrapping " around the value, it blows up at b trying to turn that into JSON (since literals aren’t supported in JSON like that).

---

I haven’t tried using the more advanced JSON (like the dictionary matching) yet. From my perspective you’ve got a few options for configuration:

• Use the environmental variables to examine the JSON.
• Require users to fork the repository to configure the values in a file.
• Run the service yourself and store people’s deploy keys (rather than access tokens) with some kind of admin interface. This option would probably allow a lot more people to use it, but also adds a lot more burden to you.
• Read a configuration file from the destination site’s .well-known each time a micropub comes in.
• Allow the service to have an admin interface to configure the rules and store them somewhere.

I think the last two, with some kind of dry-run-able transaction support, would be an easier way to get the configuration working.

I ended up reverting a few commits to my repo while getting things set up. Now that I think about it, allowing me to specify which branch to commit to would also help.

[voxpelli]

Sorry for not being responsive here – life kind of got in the way.

Are you @zacwest and @pmarsceill saying that even non-JSON configurations needs quotes and escaping? Plain strings should work with no extra effort at all – else it’s a bug