Heroku can't find local module on heroku (Node.js)

Question

I'm working on a Node.js app, and am using a config.js file that exposes my twitter API tokens/secrets. I'm doing this because I plan on open-sourcing the application after I finish it, and would like to keep those private (and thus, have put that file in my .gitignore.

Anyways, to my question - I'm getting the following error log:

2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]: node.js:134
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:         ^
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:         throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]: Error: Cannot find module './config'
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at require (module.js:348:19)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function._load (module.js:266:25)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function._resolveFilename (module.js:320:11)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Object.<anonymous> (/app/app.js:6:19)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Module._compile (module.js:404:26)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Object..js (module.js:410:10)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Function._load (module.js:297:12)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at EventEmitter._tickCallback (node.js:126:26)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Module.load (module.js:336:31)
2012-04-09T22:41:12+00:00 app[web.1]:     at Array.<anonymous> (module.js:423:10)
2012-04-09T22:41:13+00:00 heroku[web.1]: State changed from starting to crashed
2012-04-09T22:41:13+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 1

My file name is config.js, and I am doing a: var config = require('./config') in my app. I don't have it listed as a dependency in my package.json file, since it's not in NPM.

Running locally with foreman and the Procfile (like heroku's docs say to do) work great. But, I'm confused why it's giving me an error when I'm requiring a local file. config.js is in the same directory level as my app.js is, so the path to require it is correct.

EDIT: Below is the portion of code I am using in app.js:

var express     = require('express')
  , sys         = require('sys')
  , request     = require('request')
  , config      = require('./config')

Thanks - Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Because you put the config.js file in your .gitignore it is not being pushed to the Heroku server, like you said you had intended. For what you say you want to do, you would typically use Heroku's config vars to set environment variables that are then read in by your application:

$ heroku config:add TWITTER_TOKEN=<token> TWITTER_SECRET=<secret>

Then in your app.js file you can access these environment variables with:

var token = process.env['TWITTER_TOKEN'];
var secret = process.env['TWITTER_SECRET'];