Configuration

Configuring Recap through the CLI or environment variables.

1. Overview
   1. Environment Variables
      1. RECAP_URLS
2. Dotenv
3. Secrets
   1. Docker

Overview

Recap’s CLI and gateway are configured through a combination of environment variables, config files, and a secrets directory.

The resolution order (lowest to highest priority):

1. Secrets file
2. Config file
3. Dotenv file
4. Environment variables

Recap uses pydantic-settings to manage configuration. See its documentation for more information.

Environment Variables

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
RECAP_CONFIG	TEXT	Path to the config file.	~/.recap/config	YES
RECAP_SECRETS	TEXT	Path to the secrets directory.		NO
RECAP_URLS	TEXT	List of URLs in JSON format containing authorization credentials.		NO
RECAP_REGISTRY_STORAGE_URL	TEXT	Location to store registry schemas in an fsspec-compatible URL format.		NO
RECAP_REGISTRY_STORAGE_ARGS	TEXT	Additional attributes to supply when creating the registry’s fsspec filesystem object.		NO

RECAP_URLS

The RECAP_URLS environment variable is important. It allows you to define connection strings for URLs that contain login credentials like usernames and passwords or authentication tokens.

For example, if you have a URL like postgresql://user:pass@localhost:5432/testdb, you can set the RECAP_URLS environment variable like so:

export RECAP_URLS='["postgresql://some_user:some_pass@localhost:5432/testdb"]'

All ls or schema calls for the URL will use the credentials defined in the environment variable.

You don’t need to specify a full path for URL credentials. Recap will substitute in any username, password, or query parameters that are defined in the environment variable, so this command:

curl http://localhost:8000/gateway/ls/postgresql://localhost:5432/testdb/public

Would be translated to:

curl http://localhost:8000/gateway/ls/postgresql://some_user:some_pass@localhost:5432/testdb/public

The URL matching is done on the scheme (“postgresql” in our example) and netloc (“localhost:5432” in our example) for a URL.

Dotenv

Recap supports .env files as well. Recap will look for a .env file in the current working directory and load it if it exists. If not, it’ll recurse upwards until it finds one.

Here’s an example .env file:

RECAP_SECRETS=/path/to/secrets
RECAP_SYSTEMS__MY_BQ=bigquery://
RECAP_SYSTEMS__MY_PG=postgresql://localhost:5432/testdb

See pydantic-settings for more information.

Secrets

Recap supports a secrets directory (RECAP_SECRETS) that contains files with secrets. Each file’s name corrseponds to its environment variable name, and each file’s contents are the environment variable’s value.

For example, if Recap is configured to use /path/to/secrets as its secrets directory, and /path/to/secrets/recap_urls contains ["postgresql://user:passlocalhost:5432/testdb"], then Recap will use the credentials defined in the file for any ls or schema calls for the URL.

See pydantic-settings’s secrets section for more information.

Docker

If you’re deploying Recap’s server in Docker, see the gateway and registry documentation and pydantic-settings for Docker secrets instructions.