Ving

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Environment Variables ​

Everything that can be changed between various deployments of Ving from QA to Production to individual developer laptops is controlled in the .env file in the root of the ving project folder. Thus .env is excluded from git, as it should be different for each deployment. We then make use of these variables through Node's --env-file CLI parameter.

There are two types of variables that can end up in .env, editable and generated variables.

Editable Variables ​

Editable Variables are variables that you, the developer or devops person, are required to provide.

VING_SKIPJACK_KEY ​

This sets the encryption key for the algorithm that obsucates database IDs in URLs making them unguessable to the public. It should be a series of 1 to 10 random numbers separated by commas.

bash
VING_SKIPJACK_KEY=3,493,19,1,5,7,11,9393,11,19429

Note that changing this after your site is in the wild will change all the keys that external users may have stored in their use of your Rest endpoints. Also, if you don't set this we'll just use our own set of numbers, but then anybody that has access to the Ving source code could figure out the values of your ids.

VING_MYSQL ​

bash
VING_MYSQL="mysql://ving:fdsfdsfdsdsf@localhost:3380/ving"

You can also add log=yes to the end if you would like to see all SQL queries end up in your ving.log for debugging purposes.

bash
VING_MYSQL="mysql://ving:ksdksdfllsdf@localhost:3380/ving?log=yes"

VING_SMTP ​

The configuration URL for your SMTP server.

bash
VING_SMTP="smtp://AKIAdsfadasfTZZD:BadsfsdfsdsLL@email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:465/?tls=yes&log=yes"

The tls and log sections on the end of the URL are optional. Remove the tls section if your SMTP server doesn't support TLS encrypted communication. And remove the log section if you don't want to put every email outcome into your ving.log.

VING_EMAIL_OVERRIDE ​

If this exists, all outgoing emails will go to this email address instead of their intended address. This is of course great for development purposes, and should not be used in production.

bash
VING_EMAIL_OVERRIDE="mytestemail@gmail.com"

VING_REDIS ​

A connection string to your Redis install.

bash
VING_REDIS="redis://localhost:6379"

Can also include username and password like this:

bash
VING_REDIS="redis://user:pass@localhost:6379"

If you're using Redis Cluster, you can add ?cluster=yes to the end of the URL.

Note that if you're hosting on AWS, all Redis instances there have TLS enabled by default, so the URL prefix will have 2 's' at the end like this: rediss://.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID ​

The access key that will be used to deploy resources and access S3.

bash
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="JKHHGJKLHHGKL"

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY ​

The secret access key for AWS that will be used to deploy resources and access S3.

bash
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="afsdlkjlkafsjdlkjasfdkjlalskfasdf"

AWS_REGION ​

The AWS region you want to deploy services in.

bash
AWS_REGION="us-east-1"

VING_SITE_URL ​

The URL of this site as it should appear in generated URLs. Should not end in a /.

bash
VING_SITE_URL="http://localhost:3000"

Generated Variables ​

Generated variables are generated by one of Ving's subsystems, usually CDK, for resources that are automatically configured and then must be referenced later.

VING_LAMBDA_PROCESS_UPLOADS_URL ​

This is the location of the AWS Lambda function that post processes S3File uploads.

bash
VING_LAMBDA_PROCESS_UPLOADS_URL="https://yvgmjfp5c7aasfdgf3efqhy0vbkll.lambda-url.us-east-1.on.aws/"

VING_AWS_UPLOADS_BUCKET ​

This is the name of the S3 bucket that will hold S3File uploads.

bash
VING_AWS_UPLOADS_BUCKET="ving-dev-uploads-ea6sd53e"

VING_AWS_UPLOADS_KEY ​

The the IAM key that will be used to grant users access to upload a file to the VING_AWS_UPLOADS_BUCKET.

bash
VING_AWS_UPLOADS_KEY="dssasdflkjadfslasfdRE7IQ"

VING_AWS_UPLOADS_SECRET ​

The the IAM secret that will be used to grant users access to upload a file to the VING_AWS_UPLOADS_BUCKET.

bash
VING_AWS_UPLOADS_SECRET="sssljadsflkjalsdfslfNLzO"

VING_AWS_THUMBNAILS_BUCKET ​

This is the name of the S3 bucket that will hold S3File uploads generated thumbnails.

bash
VING_AWS_THUMBNAILS_BUCKET="ving-dev-thumbnails-6dsd53cc"

ving.json ​

As a side note there is also a ving.json file. That is used to store configurable data that does not change between modes of deployment. Usually you'll set this data when you set up your project, and then likely will never change it again.

site ​

This section deals with data relating to the site.

site.email ​

The email address that messages generated by the site should come from by default.

json
"email": "info@example.com",

site.name ​

The name of this site.

json
"name": "ving",

site.logoUrl ​

The relative path of a logo in your repo to display in emails and on the site.

json
"logoUrl": "/ving.svg",

site.streetAddress ​

An array containing the physical street address of the entity that owns the site. This is required for compliance with anti-spam laws.

json
"streetAddress": [
    "123 Main Street",
    "Madison, WI 53701",
    "USA"
]