Cannot find file '../aws-exports'

[trevorallred]

Describe the bug
When I try to build my application remotely, it fails do to the following error:

2019-03-04T17:16:13.489Z [INFO]: $ react-scripts build
2019-03-04T17:16:14.796Z [INFO]: Creating an optimized production build...
2019-03-04T17:16:21.183Z [INFO]: Failed to compile.
2019-03-04T17:16:21.184Z [INFO]: ./src/pages/amplify.js
Cannot find file '../aws-exports' in './src/pages'.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create a react js application
2. Initialize the application with amplify init
3. Notice init creates the src/aws-exports.js file and correctly adds it to the .gitignore file
4. Add this code to your App.js file.

import Amplify from 'aws-amplify';
import aws_exports from '../aws-exports';
Amplify.configure(aws_exports);

5. Run the application locally. It works correctly.
6. Run amplify push
7. Look at the Frontend build output and notice it fails to build

Expected behavior
To configure Amplify, the documentation explains that you should reference a file called aws-exports.js. This works fine locally because it's created locally. But when I commit the file and pull it from the repo, the build complains that it's not there. The docs don't explain where this file should be remotely and how you can refer to a file locally yet not check it in.

Additional Info
There seem to be some hints about what's happening in the Provisioning step

HEAD is now at 7b8a433... add environment var for api and fix index
2019-03-04T17:16:11.041Z [INFO]: Retrieving environment cache...

I think that remotely, it's adding in the aws-exports file somewhere but it's possible it's in a different location, which is why my import can't find the file.

[swaminator]

@trevorallred what are you using to build your app remotely?

[ahummel25]

Any clarity around this and how to use aws-exports file remotely? Since it's in .gitignore, how do we access it when deploying code?

[kaustavghosh06]

You should run amplify init as the first step to re-create the aws-exports.js file and then run your frontend build. This is what we do at the backend build step in Amplify console.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically closed because of inactivity. Please open a new issue if are still encountering problems.

[charlesfayal]

You should run amplify init as the first step to re-create the aws-exports.js file and then run your frontend build. This is what we do at the backend build step in Amplify console.

Does this mean it should be in the prebuild for the front end?

[jviaches]

I am also wondering the same question as @ahummel25 .
Does anyone can shed a light on it ?

[trevorallred]

I was able to finally resolve this but it was a while ago so I don't fully remember the details. I'll try to explain below.

aws-exports.js is a file that gets created by amplify init and has basic settings like what AWS region, Cognito Identity Pool to use, and more. This would be different for each environment (like dev and prod). This changes each time you change the amplify environment. So you don't want to check this file in since it has all the environment config data.

When you build your Amplify app remotely in AWS, something automatically creates this file and puts it into the root deployed folder. Locally, this means the file is in my ./src folder next to my index.tsx file. So I reference like this:

import config from './aws-exports';

Since this issue keeps coming up, I think the documentation should be updated. The "magic" creation of aws-exports when deploying your app on AWS Amplify needs further clarification.

[jviaches]

@trevorallred thanks for explanation. Just to clarify, you do not commit this file to repository ? So when you build it on AWS, it creates this file automatically depending on environment ?
Do you need amplify init command in your deploy scripts ?

[ph0ph0]

@trevorallred @kaustavghosh06 @swaminator any advice on this? I am facing the same error when deploying via Netlify