RAILWAY_API_TOKEN is ignored when running railway link

[nathanlindsay]

Running railway link -p ... after version 3.14.0 always results in "Unauthorized. Please login with railway login" even when RAILWAY_API_TOKEN is set

[brody192]

Hello, Please make sure you are on the least version.

[nathanlindsay]

Yes this applies to the latest version

[maddsua]

Just checked the latest version in a CI and the only way for me to get this is by messing up branch protection rules that affect the variable. Could you share more of your context? Like, are you having that issue in CI, what's your env setup is, etc.?

[snide]

Confirming that I get this as well. It's when you are logged out.

I'm trying to build a CI pipeline in Github actions. Unfortunately nearly all of the CLI requires the project to be linked. You can't link without logging it, and settings RAILWAY_API_TOKEN or RAILWAY_TOKEN don't seem to matter.

Regardless of using the CLI in Github, I can see the same problem in a Linux env locally.

[maddsua]

But why do you need to link a project?
When you create a project token in the dashboard this will automatically link that token to a specific project so that when you authorize the CLI with that token it will be already linked.

@nathanlindsay @snide

[snide]

@maddsua Because the vast majority of the CLI requires me to link it to use it's functionality. As a very concrete example, I need to set an environment variable for a DB_URL on build. In my case I want to build a github action that deploys a new environment for each PR and that passes in a unique env var per build. This would let me run a full flow where I isolate each PR with it's own preview, it's own DB (not hosted by railway), and can then pass that deployed preview URL to my test framework.

Vercel provides vercel env to do something like this.

Without allowing the railway CLI to be logged in, or run equivalent commands in a CI pipeline it's sort of neutered vs. running it locally where I can login and link.

Here's a full discussion on your discord about my usage.
https://discord.com/channels/713503345364697088/1318999369260859473

Ultimately, I went with Fly which seemed to support this stuff much better
https://fly.io/docs/apps/secrets/

[coffee-cup]

I just confirmed that you can link to a project with the RAILWAY_API_TOKEN variable in the latest version of the CLI. It was fixed in a PR a while back.

[ImLunaHey]

"It was fixed in a PR a while back."

this didn't work last week. are you sure on that?

[ImLunaHey]

also did you actually check that it works with project tokens or a personal token because personal tokens always worked.

nope i was wrong.

[coffee-cup]

The original issue is for an account token. As seen in the screenshot that works.

Project tokens are slightly different as they are scoped to a single environment and intended to be used for the railway up or railway run commands

[ImLunaHey]

1. the original issue and comments were not about account tokens.
2. this use to work on the old cli

nope i was wrong.

[coffee-cup]

The original issue of

Running railway link -p ... after version 3.14.0 always results in "Unauthorized. Please login with railway login" even when RAILWAY_API_TOKEN is set

is fixed. RAILWAY_API_TOKEN is an account token.

Do you know a version where the project token (RAILWAY_TOKEN) used to work? If there is a regression there we can open a new issue.

I didn't intend to close this without it being fixed. But I tried what was outlined in the original comment and it works. If I missed something please provide an example so we can fix it.