How can I set NODE_ENV=production with nodemon on Windows?

Question

"scripts": {
    "start": "SET NODE_ENV=staging && nodemon app",
    "production": "set NODE_ENV=production && nodemon app",
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },

it's not working ⚒

my staging port is 3000 and my production port is 5000 but no matter what I do nodemon is not taking the value.

Answer 1

The likely problem is that the space character before && becomes part of the environment-variable values, so that the values are staging and production - note the trailing space - rather than staging and production.

The simplest way to avoid this is to remove the space before && (it looks awkward, but it works):

"scripts": {
    "start": "SET NODE_ENV=staging&& nodemon app",
    "production": "set NODE_ENV=production&& nodemon app",
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  }

To avoid such problems in general, it's best to assign variable values in cmd.exe using the form
set "variable=value", i.e. to enclose the name, the =, and the value in "..." overall, which delimits the value explicitly, irrespective of subsequent (unquoted) whitespace; therefore, the following should work too (with the embedded " characters escaped as \", as required by JSON).

"scripts": {
    "start": "SET \"NODE_ENV=staging\" && nodemon app",
    "production": "set \"NODE_ENV=production\" && nodemon app",
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  }