'How do I solve "Middleware "strapi::session": App keys are required" error in my deployment of Strapi to Heroku?

I'm following the official instructions to deploy my strapi starter app to Heroku. The app runs fine locally. The only thing I left out in my deployment instructions were installing the PG node module (it is already installed because my local app uses Postgresql).

Accessing the Heroku logs, I see this:

error: Middleware "strapi::session": App keys are required. 
Please set app.keys in config/server.js (ex: keys: ['myKeyA', 'myKeyB'])

Maybe this is an important detail: I followed this process once, and everything worked. I was able to deploy to Heroku. I tried it again and it didn't work. I was thinking maybe Heroku had a problem with me re-using an app name, but I tried to name the app something different in Heroku and I still had the same error.

Is heroku looking in the wrong place for my server.js file? Should it be looking in my "./config/env/production" folder instead of my "./config" folder?

Per the instructions, here is my ./config/env/production/database.js

const parse = require('pg-connection-string').parse;
const config = parse(process.env.DATABASE_URL);

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  connection: {
    client: 'postgres',
    connection: {
      host: config.host,
      port: config.port,
      database: config.database,
      user: config.user,
      password: config.password,
      ssl: {
        rejectUnauthorized: false
      },
    },
    debug: false,
  },
});

Here is my ./config/env/production/server.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
    url: env('MY_HEROKU_URL'),
});

And here is my ./config/server.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  host: env('HOST', '0.0.0.0'),
  port: env.int('PORT', 1337),
  app: {
    keys: env.array('APP_KEYS'),
  },
});

my package.json for good measure:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "@strapi/plugin-graphql": "^4.0.0",
    "@strapi/plugin-i18n": "4.0.6",
    "@strapi/plugin-users-permissions": "4.0.6",
    "@strapi/strapi": "4.0.6",
    "lodash.set": "^4.3.2",
    "pg": "8.6.0",
    "pg-connection-string": "^2.5.0"
  },
  "name": "backend",
  "private": true,
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "description": "A Strapi application",
  "scripts": {
    "develop": "strapi develop",
    "start": "strapi start",
    "build": "strapi build",
    "strapi": "strapi"
  },
  "devDependencies": {},
  "author": {
    "name": "A Strapi developer"
  },
  "strapi": {
    "uuid": "f64b509e-2d95-4464-8d39-d6f0d1c7a31a",
    "template": "@strapi/template-corporate@^1.0.0",
    "starter": "@strapi/starter-next-corporate"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=12.x.x <=16.x.x",
    "npm": ">=6.0.0"
  },
  "license": "MIT"
}

I'm running Node v14.18.3 and NPM v6.14.15

node.jsherokustrapi


Solution 1:[1]

I solved it with this in ./config/env/production/server.js

module.exports = ({ env }) => ({
  url: env("MY_HEROKU_URL"),
  proxy: true,
  app: {
    keys: env.array("APP_KEYS", ["testKey1", "testKey2"]),
  },
});

testKey1, testKey2 are just placeholders and need to be replaced by 2 random keys via CONFIG VAR in heroku

APP_KEYS=someSecret,anotherSecret

proxy: true was also important. Else it throws a Cannot send secure cookie over unencrypted connection

Solution 2:[2]

On Heroku, for that particular app, navigate to Settings->Config vars and add your environment variables there.

Solution 3:[3]

just create .env file in root of your project like this:

HOST=0.0.0.0
PORT=1337
APP_KEYS=jP8pb1lYsAhnmURarewxhA==,34xnLMYHY5jiU7ONTstTqQ==

Solution 4:[4]

So you just need to create a variable in Heroku settings->config vars called APP_KEYS. And value of this variable you can get from your .env file where you should have APP_KEYS variable with value.

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1
Solution 2 Alex
Solution 3 Mohsen
Solution 4 Nikita Prus

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