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Environment Variables

Environment Variables

The backend reads its configuration from environment variables. A .env file is optional — loading is done through godotenv and every variable has a safe default for local development.

The reference template lives at backend/.env.example:

# Server
PORT=8080
DATABASE_URL=postgres://kazier:kazier@localhost:5432/kazier_dev?sslmode=disable
UPLOAD_DIR=./uploads
MAX_FILE_SIZE_MB=50
OCR_LANG=fra+eng

# Security — change in production (never commit)
AUTH_SECRET=dev-secret-change-me

# First admin (created only if the users table is empty)
ADMIN_USERNAME=admin
ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me

Reference

Variable	Default	Description
`PORT`	`8080`	HTTP listening port.
`DATABASE_URL`	`postgres://kazier:kazier@localhost:5432/kazier_dev?sslmode=disable`	PostgreSQL connection URL (lib/pq).
`UPLOAD_DIR`	`./uploads`	Directory where uploaded physical files are stored as `<UPLOAD_DIR>/<user_id>/<resource_id>.<ext>`.
`MAX_FILE_SIZE_MB`	`50`	Maximum upload size in MB. Exceeding it returns `FILE_TOO_LARGE` (HTTP 413).
`OCR_LANG`	`fra+eng`	Tesseract language list for OCR jobs (`+`-separated).
`AUTH_SECRET`	`dev-secret-change-me`	Signing secret for PASETO v4-local tokens. Must be random and secret in production.
`ADMIN_USERNAME`	—	Username of the bootstrap admin. Required on first start if the users table is empty.
`ADMIN_PASSWORD`	—	Password of the bootstrap admin. Required on first start.

Bootstrap admin

The first admin is created only when the users table is empty. If the user table is empty and ADMIN_USERNAME or ADMIN_PASSWORD is missing, the server refuses to start.

The environment never overwrites an existing account — admin credentials are ignored on subsequent starts.

Production checklist

Set a strong random AUTH_SECRET (e.g. openssl rand -hex 32).
Change ADMIN_PASSWORD.
Use a dedicated PostgreSQL user/password (not kazier/kazier).
Use a DATABASE_URL with real credentials and an external database if needed.
Back up UPLOAD_DIR and the database.
Never commit a .env file (reference: backend/.env.example).