Configuration

Platformatic Service 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.service.json
• platformatic.service.json5
• platformatic.service.yml or platformatic.service.yaml
• platformatic.service.tml or platformatic.service.toml

Alternatively, a --config option with a configuration filepath can be passed to most platformatic service 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:

• server (required)
• metrics
• plugin

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

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.

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).

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,
      "options": {
        "foo": "bar"
      }
    }
  }

:::

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"]
    }
  }

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.service.json

{
  "server": {
    "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 service

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 service --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.