Environment Variables
Configure your app with environment variables, including secret values.
Environment variables are key–value pairs your app reads at runtime. They're the standard way to configure things like API keys, database URLs, and feature flags — without hard-coding them into your source.
Setting variables
Open your app and go to the Configuration tab.
Add your variables as KEY=value pairs (for example NODE_ENV=production).
Save and redeploy. The new variables are injected into your container.
Secret variables
Some values — API keys, passwords, tokens — shouldn't be visible in the UI or API responses. Mark a variable's key as secret and Better-PaaS redacts its value everywhere it's displayed, the same way it handles deploy tokens.
Secret values are still passed to your app normally at runtime — they're just hidden from API responses and the dashboard so they don't leak over your shoulder or through logs.
The PORT variable
Better-PaaS sets a PORT variable telling your app which port to listen on.
Always bind your server to it:
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
app.listen(port);import os
port = int(os.environ.get("PORT", 8000))If your app ignores PORT and listens on a fixed port, health checks will fail
and the deploy won't go live.
Variables from attached databases
When you attach a managed database to an app, Better-PaaS automatically injects its connection variables (host, port, user, password, database name / connection URL). You don't set these by hand.