Configuration

"Configuration" throughout the documentation and codebase refers to these variables which are statically set when the process launches. Changing them requires a restart, however they don't need to be changed much once set.

Configuration is done via environment variables. The following variables are available:

Core parameters

These settings are necessary to customise for pretty much all production installations.

PRODUCTION

default: false

Used for logging and switching some behaviour to use mocks instead of real services.

When true:

• logs will be output in JSON.
• emails will be logged instead of sent.
• SMS messages will be logged instead of sent.
• other behaviour that, generally, only developers of Storyden will care about.

DATABASE_URL

default: a SQLite file located at ./data/data.db

This specifies the primary database Storyden will persist all its main data in. It can accept Postgres or SQLite URL-style strings.

LISTEN_ADDR

default: 0.0.0.0:8000

The interface bind address. Usually you won't ever need to change this.

COOKIE_DOMAIN

default: localhost

This is important as it affects the ability for users to authenticate. It's used for both cookies and WebAuthn.

Warning: Changing this will break WebAuthn/Passkey sessions. There's a planned workaround coming but currently it's not recommended you switch domains if you allow users to authenticate with WebAuthn/Passkey.

SESSION_KEY

default: 0000000000000000

An encryption key for secure cookies. Do not leave this as the default value for production installations. Changing this value will invalidate all active sessions.

PUBLIC_WEB_ADDRESS

default: http://localhost:3000

The public address for the frontend application. Change this to your production frontend URL with which you access the web application from via a browser. In production it should not have a port number and should use https.

Optional

ASSET_STORAGE_TYPE

default: empty string - local filesystem storage

When unset, all persistent storage of files (avatars, uploads, assets, etc) will use the local filesystem.

When set to s3, the other S3_ prefixed variables are required and all persistent storage of files will use S3.

ASSET_STORAGE_LOCAL_PATH

When ASSET_STORAGE_TYPE specifies local file storage, this variable controls where the files are stored.

S3 Configuration

The following variables are required when ASSET_STORAGE_TYPE is set to s3.

• S3_ENDPOINT
• S3_BUCKET
• S3_REGION
• S3_ACCESS_KEY
• S3_SECRET_KEY

Internal

These are often used during development of Storyden itself, plugins or frontends and rarely need to be set by end-users.

LOG_LEVEL

default: info

See zapcore.Level (opens in a new tab).

RUN_FRONTEND

default: (empty)

Internal or advanced use only. A directory path that, when non-empty, be used to run the frontend Next.js app from.

The all-in-one Docker image uses this to ensure the frontend process is a child process of the backend process and they start/stop together. If you're self-hosting outside of Docker, you should not need to use this because it's simpler to use your preferred job management solution (such as systemd) to manage both processes independently.