Environment Variables

This page contains all available environment variables supported by Mathesar. See the specific installation guides for the applicable environment variables and instructions on how to set them.

Backend configuration

SECRET_KEY

• Description: A unique random string used by Django for cryptographic signing (see Django docs).
• Format: A 50 character string
• Additional information: You can generate a secret key using this tool if needed.

ALLOWED_HOSTS

• Description: A list of hostnames that Mathesar will be accessible at (see Django docs).
  • Hostnames should not contain the protocol (e.g. http) or trailing slashes.
  • You can use localhost in this list.

• Format: Comma separated string of hostnames

  Valid values

  • mathesar.example.com, localhost
  • .localhost, mathesar.example.com, 35.188.184.125

  Invalid values

  • http://mathesar.example.com/ - contains HTTP protocol and a trailing slash
  • https://mathesar.example.com - contains HTTPS protocol
  • localhost/, 35.188.184.125 - contains trailing slash after localhost

DJANGO_DATABASE_URL

• Description: A Postgres connection string of the database used for Mathesar’s internal usage.
• Format:postgres://user:password@hostname:port/database_name
  • The connection string above will connect to a database with username user, password password, hostname mathesar_db, port 5432, and database name mathesar_django.

MATHESAR_DATABASES

• Description: Names and connection information for databases managed by Mathesar. These databases will be accessible through the UI.
• Format:(unique_id|connection_string),(unique_id|connection_string),...
  • e.g. (db1|postgresql://u:p@example.com:5432/db1),(db2|postgresql://u:p@example.com:5432/db2)
  • This would set Mathesar to connect to two databases, db1 and db2 which are both accessed via the same user u, password p, hostname example.com, and port 5432.

Caddy reverse proxy configuration

DOMAIN_NAME

• Description: The public URL that will be used to access Mathesar (see Caddy docs).

• Format: A URL or hostname

  Example values

  • https://example.com
  • localhost
  • http://localhost

• Additional information

  • If the protocol is http, then Caddy will serve traffic via HTTP only.
  • If the protocol is https or is not specified, then Caddy will serve traffic via HTTPS (and will redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS). In this case Caddy will also attempt to automatically set up HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt for you (see Caddy docs).

  Tip

  • Set this to localhost if you’d like Mathesar to be available only on localhost
  • Set the protocol to http if you don’t want Caddy to automatically handle setting up SSL, e.g. http://example.com

HTTP_PORT

• Description: Configures the port that Caddy will use when DOMAIN_NAME specifies a http protocol.

• Default value: 80

  Tip

  • It is recommended to use the default port 80 as features like automatic SSL rely on it (see Caddy docs).
  • You probably want to change it to a different port if one of these is true:
    • you already have a reverse proxy handling SSL on your system
    • you are running Mathesar on a non-root system

HTTPS_PORT

• Description: Configures the port that Caddy will use when DOMAIN_NAME specifies a https protocol or does not specify a protocol.

• Default value: 443

  Tip

  • If you want Caddy to handle the SSL certificate it is highly recommended to use the default port 443 as features like automatic SSL, and HTTPS redirection rely on it (see Caddy docs).
  • You probably want to change it to a different port if one of these is true:
    • you already have a reverse proxy handling SSL on your system
    • you are running Mathesar on a non-root system