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Configuration

Platformatic Runtime 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.runtime.json
  • platformatic.runtime.json5
  • platformatic.runtime.yml or platformatic.runtime.yaml
  • platformatic.runtime.tml or platformatic.runtime.toml

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

The configuration examples in this reference use JSON.

Supported formats​

FormatExtensions
JSON.json
JSON5.json5
YAML.yml, .yaml
TOML.tml

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

Settings​

Configuration settings are organized into the following groups:

Configuration settings containing sensitive data should be set using configuration placeholders.

The autoload and services settings can be used together, but at least one of them must be provided. When the configuration file is parsed, autoload configuration is translated into services configuration.

autoload​

The autoload configuration is intended to be used with monorepo applications. autoload is an object with the following settings:

  • path (required, string) - The path to a directory containing the microservices to load. In a traditional monorepo application, this directory is typically named packages.
  • exclude (array of strings) - Child directories inside of path that should not be processed.
  • mappings (object) - Each microservice is given an ID and is expected to have a Platformatic configuration file. By default the ID is the microservice's directory name, and the configuration file is expected to be a well-known Platformatic configuration file. mappings can be used to override these default values.
    • id (required, string) - The overridden ID. This becomes the new microservice ID.
    • config (required**, string) - The overridden configuration file name. This is the file that will be used when starting the microservice.
    • useHttp (boolean) - The service will be started on a random HTTP port on 127.0.0.1, and exposed to the other services via that port; set it to true if you are using @fastify/express. Default: false.

services​

services is an array of objects that defines the microservices managed by the runtime. Each service object supports the following settings:

  • id (required, string) - A unique identifier for the microservice. When working with the Platformatic Composer, this value corresponds to the id property of each object in the services section of the config file. When working with client objects, this corresponds to the optional serviceId property or the name field in the client's package.json file if a serviceId is not explicitly provided.
  • path (required, string) - The path to the directory containing the microservice.
  • config (required, string) - The configuration file used to start the microservice.
  • useHttp (boolean) - The service will be started on a random HTTP port on 127.0.0.1, and exposed to the other services via that port; set it to true if you are using @fastify/express. Default: false.

entrypoint​

The Platformatic Runtime's entrypoint is a microservice that is exposed publicly. This value must be the ID of a service defined via the autoload or services configuration.

hotReload​

An optional boolean, defaulting to false, indicating if hot reloading should be enabled for the runtime. If this value is set to false, it will disable hot reloading for any microservices managed by the runtime. If this value is true, hot reloading for individual microservices is managed by the configuration of that microservice.

danger

While hot reloading is useful for development, it is not recommended for use in production.

Note that watch should be enabled for each individual service in the runtime.

allowCycles​

An optional boolean, defaulting to false, indicating if dependency cycles are allowed between microservices managed by the runtime. When the Platformatic Runtime parses the provided configuration, it examines the clients of each microservice, as well as the services of Platformatic Composer applications to build a dependency graph. A topological sort is performed on this dependency graph so that each service is started after all of its dependencies have been started. If there are cycles, the topological sort fails and the Runtime does not start any applications.

If allowCycles is true, the topological sort is skipped, and the microservices are started in the order specified in the configuration file.

telemetry​

Open Telemetry is optionally supported with these settings:

  • serviceName (required, string) — Name of the service as will be reported in open telemetry. In the runtime case, the name of the services as reported in traces is ${serviceName}-${serviceId}, where serviceId is the id of the service in the runtime.
  • version (string) — Optional version (free form)
  • skip (array). Optional list of operations to skip when exporting telemetry defined object with properties:
    • method: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, HEAD, OPTIONS, TRACE
    • path. e.g.: /documentation/json
  • exporter (object or array) — Exporter configuration. If not defined, the exporter defaults to console. If an array of objects is configured, every object must be a valid exporter object. The exporter object has the following properties:
    • type (string) — Exporter type. Supported values are console, otlp, zipkin and memory (default: console). memory is only supported for testing purposes.
    • options (object) — These options are supported:
      • url (string) — The URL to send the telemetry to. Required for otlp exporter. This has no effect on console and memory exporters.
      • headers (object) — Optional headers to send with the telemetry. This has no effect on console and memory exporters.

Note that OTLP traces can be consumed by different solutions, like Jaeger. Here the full list.

Example

{
  "telemetry": {
      "serviceName": "test-service",
      "exporter": {
          "type": "otlp",
          "options": {
              "url": "http://localhost:4318/v1/traces"
          }
      }
  }
}

server​

This configures the Platformatic Runtime entrypoint server. If the entrypoint has also a server configured, when the runtime is started, this configuration is used.

See Platformatic Service server for more details.

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_ENTRYPOINT}.

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

Setting environment variables​

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

.env
PLT_ENTRYPOINT=service

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_ENTRYPOINT=service npx platformatic runtime

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 runtime --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.

Placeholder wildcard​

You're also able to define a placeholder wildcard, with your own prefix, for example:

npx platformatic runtime --allow-env=MY_NS_*

This will allow you to use placeholders like {MY_NS_MY_VAR}.