NodeJS Google Vision is unable to detect a Project Id in the current environment

Question

Under Ubuntu environment, NodeJS Google Vision complains:

Error: Unable to detect a Project Id in the current environment.

Even though I already put json credential through

$ export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/var/credential_google.json"

Please help.

Answer 1

It's not recommended to use a .json config file locally. I've seen these leak on production servers causing whole platforms to be deleted + the introduce environmental switching and security issues.

Setup Google Cloud CLI.

Now the server will 'look' at the local environment and use that.

If you get the error "Unable to detect a Project Id in the current environment.", it means the auth library cannot find the project default id.

You need to have a base project in Google Cloud set, regardless of environmental variables and project you're running.

Run

gcloud config set project [some-project-id]

Now if you run (node example)

"dev": "NODE_ENV=dev GCP_PROJECT=some-project-id nodemon index.ts",

It will load the project environment. This also allows you to deploy easier with:

"deploy:dev": "y | gcloud app deploy --project some-dev-project app.yaml",
"deploy:prod": "y | gcloud app deploy --project some-prod-project app.yaml"

App engine has security setup automatically with standard environments. With flex you can use one of the manage images Google Provides.