Cordova 11.1.0 – Can’t access Cordova hook environment variables using Node.js – returns undefined

I’ve tried running hooks for an old application using Cordova, Node.js and Angular.

It is trying to get an environment variable from process.env like process.env.CORDOVA_CMDLINE but when console logging it returns undefined.

After further investigation, when logging process.env it returns a long text but doesn’t show any of the environment variables that should be there. As they appear on the cordova documentation.

I’ve gone through a bunch of websites and stack overflow threads but I couldn’t find a proper solution, or an example of it working. Maybe a more updated case. I’m currently using Cordova 11.1.0.

The only solution I could find is adding them to a .env file but I feel like that is not the right answer. In the documentation it clearly states that each variable will return a specific value. And the application was working on older versions without a .env file so I don’t think this is the case.

I’m running after_prepare hooks that are clearly stated in the config.xml file. So the program is running and executing the hooks as expected. The only problem is it breaks because it is trying to do things with an undefined value (because it doesn’t exist in process.env).

// Modules
var fs = require('fs');
var path = require('path');

var cliCommand = process.env.CORDOVA_CMDLINE;
var isRelease = (cliCommand.indexOf('--release') > -1);

var rootdir = process.argv[2];

// Exit
if (!isRelease) {
  return;
}

As further clarificaion I’m running the application using the browser platform.

I wonder if any of you have encountered a similar problem and could help. Thanks!