Environment variables

The content of this article applies to the open source version of Osso and is not relevant to our paid plans. If you're already an Osso customer, skip ahead to Configuration.

If you Deploy Osso with the Heroku button, some of the these will be set for you, and you'll have the opportunity to set the others as you deploy your instance. Otherwise view your deployment platform's documentation on Environment or Configuration variables. If you're deploying on your own infrastructure, this should help you understand what services you need for a deployment, such as Postgres.

Core#

These are the required building blocks of an Osso instance.

BASE_URL#

required

The public, base url for your Osso deployment, used to construct ACS URLs. Not required for Heroku deployments that use Dyno Metadata. Must include protocol.

Example Value: https://osso.saasapp.com

DATABASE_URL#

required

The URL to your Postgres database. Heroku will generate this for you when using the deploy to Heroku button or when adding a Postgres addon. Otherwise set this with your own authenticated Postgres URI.

Example Value: postgres://user:password@ec2-54-165-36-134.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5432/d5vj7h6o2psidfy0h

SESSION_SECRET#

required

Key used for encrypting Osso sessions for both OAuth and Admin UI. Will be generated by Heroku when using the Heroku deploy button.

Example Value: 9c670917322529f383c1df29e861e2ea21c03d09e30ead661846fa87ebc5b33a

CORS_ORIGINS#

If you use Osso's React components in your application, you need to allow-list origin servers that can perform a cross-origin request as a comma separated list of origins. Be sure to remove any localhost origins from production deployments.

Example Value: https://staging.myapp.com,https://myapp.com

Email#

Osso uses email to invite users, including the first, to an instance. You need the ability to send email via an SMTP server. If you don't have this ability, we recommend a Mailgun account.

ADMIN_EMAIL#

required

As you deploy Osso, set your own email as the ADMIN_EMAIL to be invited to the instance.

Example Value: me@company.com

SMTP_LOGIN#

required

SMTP server login or username.

Example Value: postmaster@mail.example.com

SMTP_PASSWORD#

required

SMTP server password.

Example Value: secret-password

SMTP_DOMAIN#

required

A domain your SMTP server is authorized to emails from.

Example Value: ossoapp.com

SMTP_SERVER#

required

The location of your SMTP server for sending email

Example Value: smtp.mailgun.org.

Pro-tips#

CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY#

Osso uses Cypress for e2e tests. This prevents yarn / npm from downloading the Cypress binary in your release environment. Not required but recommended.

Example Value: 0