Version: 0.8.0

Configuration

Platformatic DB is configured with a configuration file. It supports the use of environment variables as setting values with configuration placeholders.

Configuration file

If the Platformatic CLI finds a file in the current working directory matching one of these filenames, it will automatically load it:

platformatic.db.json
platformatic.db.json5
platformatic.db.yml or platformatic.db.yaml
platformatic.db.tml or platformatic.db.toml

Alternatively, a --config option with a configuration filepath can be passed to most platformatic db CLI commands.

The configuration examples in this reference use JSON.

Supported formats

Format	Extensions
JSON	`.json`
JSON5	`.json5`
YAML	`.yml`, `.yaml`
TOML	`.tml`

Comments are supported by the JSON5, YAML and TOML file formats.

Settings

Configuration settings are organised into the following groups:

core (required)
dashboard
metrics
migrations
plugin
server (required)
authorization

Sensitive configuration settings, such as a database connection URL that contains a password, should be set using configuration placeholders.

`core`

A required object with the following settings:

connectionString (required, string) — Database connection URL.
- Example: postgres://user:password@my-database:5432/db-name
schema (array of string) - Currently supported only for postgres, schemas used tolook for entities. If not provided, the default public schema is used.
Examples

  "core": {
    "connectionString": "(...)",
    "schema": [
      "schema1", "schema2"
    ],
    ... 

  },

Platformatic DB supports MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
graphql (boolean or object, default: true) — Controls the GraphQL API interface, with optional GraphiQL UI.
Examples
Enables GraphQL support
```
{
  "core": {
    ...
    "graphql": true
  }
}
```
Enables GraphQL support with GraphiQL
```
{
  "core": {
    ...
    "graphql": {
      "graphiql": true
    }
  }
}
```
openapi (boolean or object, default: true) — Enables OpenAPI REST support.
- If value is an object, all OpenAPI v3 allowed properties can be passed. Also a prefix property can be passed to set the OpenAPI prefix.
- Platformatic DB uses @fastify/swagger under the hood to manage this configuration.
Examples
Enables OpenAPI
```
{
  "core": {
    ...
    "openapi": true
  }
}
```
Enables OpenAPI with prefix
```
{
  "core": {
    ...
    "openapi": {
      "prefix": "/api"
    }
  }
}
```
Enables OpenAPI with options
```
{
  "core": {
    ...
    "openapi": {
      "info": {
        "title": "Platformatic DB",
        "description": "Exposing a SQL database as REST"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

ignore (object) — Key/value object that defines which database tables should not be mapped as API entities.

Examples

{
  "core": {
    ...
    "ignore": {
      "versions": true // "versions" table will be not mapped with GraphQL/REST APIs
    }
  }
}

events (boolean or object, default: true) — Controls the support for events published by the SQL mapping layer. If enabled, this option add support for GraphQL Subscription over WebSocket. By default it uses an in-process message broker. It's possible to configure it to use Redis instead.
Examples
```
{
  "core": {
    ...
    "events": {
      "connectionString": "redis://:password@redishost.com:6380/"
    }
  }
}
```

`dashboard`

This setting can be a boolean or an object. If set to true the dashboard will be served at the root path (/).

Supported object properties:

rootPath (boolean, default: true) — Make the dashboard available at the root path (/).

`metrics`

Configuration for a Prometheus server that will export monitoring metrics for the current server instance. It uses fastify-metrics under the hood.

This setting can be a boolean or an object. If set to true the Prometheus server will listen on http://0.0.0.0:9090.

Supported object properties:

hostname (string) — The hostname where Prometheus server will listen for connections.
port (number) — The port where Prometheus server will listen for connections.
auth (object) — Basic Auth configuration. username and password are required here (use environment variables).

`migrations`

Configures Postgrator to run migrations against the database.

An optional object with the following settings:

dir (required, string): Relative path to the migrations directory.
autoApply (boolean, default: true): Automatically apply migrations when Platformatic DB server starts.

`plugin`

An optional object that defines a plugin loaded by Platformatic DB.

path (required, string): Relative path to plugin's entry point.
typescript (object): TypeScript configuration for the plugin.
- outDir (string): Relative path to the output directory for compiled JavaScript files.
hotReload (boolean, default: true) if true or not specified, the plugin is loaded using fastify-sandbox, otherwise is loaded directly using require/import and the hot reload is not enabled

options (object): Optional plugin options.

Example

{
  "plugin": {
    "path": "./my-plugin.js",
    "hotReload": true
  }
}

:::

While hot reloading is useful for development, it is not recommended to use it in production. To switch if off, set hotReload to false.

plugin can also be an array, like so:

{
  "plugin": [{
    "path": "./my-plugin.js"
  }]
}

plugin can also be a string, or an array of strings.

`watch`

Disable watching for file changes if set to false. It can also be customized with the following options:

ignore (string[], default: null): List of glob patterns to ignore when watching for changes. If null or not specified, ignore rule is not applied. Ignore option doesn't work for typescript files.
allow (string[], default: ['*.js', '**/*.js']): List of glob patterns to allow when watching for changes. If null or not specified, allow rule is not applied. Allow option doesn't work for typescript files.
Example
```
{
  "watch": {
    "ignore": ["*.mjs", "**/*.mjs"],
    "allow": ["my-plugin.js", "plugins/*.js"]
  }
}
```

`server`

A required object with the following settings:

hostname (required, string) — Hostname where Platformatic DB server will listen for connections.
port (required, number) — Port where Platformatic DB server will listen for connections.
healthCheck (boolean or object) — Enables the health check endpoint.
- Powered by @fastify/under-pressure.
- The value can be an object, used to specify the interval between checks in milliseconds (default: 5000)
Example
```
{
  "server": {
    ...
    "healthCheck": {
      "interval": 2000
    }
  }
}
```
cors (object) — Configuration for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) headers.
- All options will be passed to the @fastify/cors plugin.
logger (object) -- the logger configuration.
`pluginTimeout (integer) -- the milliseconds to wait for a Fastify plugin to load, see the fastify docs for more details.

`authorization`

Authorization settings can be set with an optional authorization object, for example:

  "authorization": {
    "adminSecret": "platformatic",
    "rules": [
       ...
    ]
  }

adminSecret (string, optional) — If defined, it will be the password used to access the dashboard and the string to send within the x-platformatic-admin-secret header when performing GraphQL/REST API calls.
rules (array) — Authorization rules that describe the CRUD actions that users are allowed to perform.

Note that if an authorization section is present, but no rules are specified, no CRUD operations are allowed (unless adminSecret is passed).

Authorization rules

Every rule must specify:

role — the role name. It's a string and must match with the role(s) set by the external authentication service
entity — the Platformatic DB entity
A set of optional defaults
One entry for each supported CRUD operation: find, save, delete

Operation options

Every operation can specify checks used for the authorizations. This value can be false (operation disabled) or true (operation enabled with no checks).

To specify more fine-grained authorization controls, add a checks field, e.g.:

{
  "role": "user",
  "entity": "page",
  "find": {
    "checks": {
      "userId": "X-PLATFORMATIC-USER-ID"
    }
  },
  ...
}

In this example, when a user with a user role executes a findPage, they can access all the data that has userId equal to the value in user metadata with key X-PLATFORMATIC-USER-ID.

Note that "userId": "X-PLATFORMATIC-USER-ID" is syntactic sugar for:

      "find": {
        "checks": {
          "userId": {
            "eq": "X-PLATFORMATIC-USER-ID"
          }
        }
      }

It's possible to specify more complex rules using all the supported where clause operators.

Note that userId MUST exist as a field in the database table to use this feature.

Fields

If a fields array is present on an operation, Platformatic DB restricts the columns on which the user can execute to that list. For save operations, the configuration must specify all the not-nullable fields (otherwise, it would fail at runtime). Platformatic does these checks at startup.

Example:

    "rule": {
        "entity": "page",
        "role": "user",
        "find": {
          "checks": {
            "userId": "X-PLATFORMATIC-USER-ID"
          },
          "fields": ["id", "title"]
        }
        ...
    }

In this case, only id and title are returned for a user with a user role on the page entity.

Defaults

Defaults are used in database insert and are default fields added automatically populated from user metadata, e.g.:

        "defaults": {
          "userId": "X-PLATFORMATIC-USER-ID"
        },

When an entity is created, the userId column is used and populated using the value from user metadata.

Anonymous role

If a user has no role, the anonymous role is assigned automatically. It's possible to specify a rule for it:

    {
      "role": "anonymous",
      "entity": "page",
      "find": false,
      "delete": false,
      "save": false
    }

In this case, the user that has no role (or has an explicitly anonymous role) has no operations allowed on the page entity.

Role and anonymous keys

The roles key in user metadata defaults to X-PLATFORMATIC-ROLE. It's possible to change it using the roleKey field in configuration. Same for the anonymous role, which value can be changed using anonymousRole.

 "authorization": {
    "roleKey": "X-MYCUSTOM-ROLE_KEY",
    "anonymousRole": "anonym",
    "rules": [
    ...
    ]
  }

Environment variable placeholders

The value for any configuration setting can be replaced with an environment variable by adding a placeholder in the configuration file, for example {PLT_SERVER_LOGGER_LEVEL}.

All placeholders in a configuration must be available as an environment variable and must meet the allowed placeholder name rules.

Example

platformatic.db.json
{
  "core": {
    "connectionString": "{DATABASE_URL}"
  },
  "server": {
    "logger": {
      "level": "{PLT_SERVER_LOGGER_LEVEL}"
    },
    "port": "{PORT}"
  }
}

Platformatic will replace the placeholders in this example with the environment variables of the same name.

Setting environment variables

If a .env file exists it will automatically be loaded by Platformatic using dotenv. For example:

.env

PLT_SERVER_LOGGER_LEVEL=info
PORT=8080

The .env file must be located in the same folder as the Platformatic configuration file or in the current working directory.

Environment variables can also be set directly on the commmand line, for example:

PLT_SERVER_LOGGER_LEVEL=debug npx platformatic db

Allowed placeholder names

Only placeholder names prefixed with PLT_, or that are in this allow list, will be dynamically replaced in the configuration file:

PORT
DATABASE_URL

This restriction is to avoid accidentally exposing system environment variables. An error will be raised by Platformatic if it finds a configuration placeholder that isn't allowed.

The default allow list can be extended by passing a --allow-env CLI option with a comma separated list of strings, for example:

npx platformatic db --allow-env=HOST,SERVER_LOGGER_LEVEL

If --allow-env is passed as an option to the CLI, it will be merged with the default allow list.

Sample Configuration

This is a bare minimum configuration for Platformatic DB. Uses a local ./db.sqlite SQLite database, with OpenAPI and GraphQL support, and with the dashboard enabled.

Server will listen to http://127.0.0.1:3042

{
  "server": {
    "hostname": "127.0.0.1",
    "port": "3042"
  },
  "core": {
    "connectionString": "'sqlite://./db.sqlite'",
    "graphiql": true,
    "openapi": {
      "enabled": true
    },
    "graphql": {
      "enabled": true
    }
  },
  "dashboard": true
}

Configuration

Configuration file​

Supported formats​

Settings​

core​

dashboard​

metrics​

migrations​

plugin​

watch​

server​

authorization​

Authorization rules​

Operation options​

Fields​

Defaults​

Anonymous role​

Role and anonymous keys​

Environment variable placeholders​

Example​

Setting environment variables​

Allowed placeholder names​

Sample Configuration​