By Vishal Basumatary in javascript — Mar 24, 2023

Setting axios base url dynamically

If you are working with a web application, it is highly likely that you will need to consume data from an API. One of the most popular libraries for making HTTP requests in JavaScript is Axios. Axios allows you to make requests to a server and receive a response in a simple and efficient way.

When working with Axios, it is common to set a base URL for your API endpoints. This is the URL that all your requests will be sent to. However, sometimes the base URL may change depending on the environment you are working in. For example, you might have a different base URL for your development environment and your production environment.

Setting the base URL dynamically

There are a few ways to set the base URL dynamically in Axios. Here are a couple of options:

Option 1: Define a base URL for each environment
Option 2: Use environment variables

Option 1: Define a base URL for each environment

If you know the base URL for each environment, one option is to define a base URL for each environment and use conditionals to determine which one to use. Here is an example:

let baseUrl;

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  baseUrl = 'https://api.example.com';
} else {
  baseUrl = 'http://localhost:3000';
}

const api = axios.create({
  baseURL: baseUrl
});

In this example, we are checking the value of the NODE_ENV environment variable. If it is set to production, we set the base URL to https://api.example.com. If it is not set to production, we set the base URL to http://localhost:3000. We then create an instance of Axios with the baseURL set to the appropriate URL.

Option 2: Use environment variables

Another option is to use environment variables to store the base URL for each environment. This allows you to easily change the base URL without having to modify your code. Here is an example:

const api = axios.create({
  baseURL: process.env.API_BASE_URL
});

In this example, we are using the API_BASE_URL environment variable to set the base URL. This allows us to easily change the base URL by modifying the environment variable without having to modify our code.

Conclusion

Setting the base URL dynamically in Axios is important when working with multiple environments. By using conditionals or environment variables, you can easily switch between different base URLs without having to modify your code.