RoadRunner — Configuration

RoadRunner supports both YAML and JSON configuration formats. The examples in our documentation use YAML, but you can use JSON as well.

Note
To convert a YAML configuration file to JSON, you can use an online tool such as https://onlineyamltools.com/convert-yaml-to-json.

#Configuration reference

The most recent configuration reference with all available options can be found in the .rr.yaml file in the RoadRunner GitHub repository:

• .rr.yaml

Warning
We use dots as level separators, e.g.: http.pool, you can't use dots in section names, queue names, etc. You can find out more about it here.

#Configuration file

The RoadRunner looks for a configuration file named .rr.yaml in the same directory as the server binary.

If your configuration file and other application files are located in a different directory than the binary, you can use the -w option to specify the working directory.

./rr serve -w /path/to/project

You can also use the -c option to specify the path to the configuration file if you don't want to specify the working directory.

./rr serve -c /path/to/project/.rr-dev.yaml

Or you can combine the -c and -w options to specify both the configuration file and the working directory:

./rr serve -c .rr-dev.yaml -w /path/to/project

Note
Read more about starting the server in the Server Commands section.

#Environment variables

Environment variables allow you to separate configuration data from your application code, making it more maintainable and portable.

RoadRunner supports the expansion of environment variables using the ${VARIABLE} or $VARIABLE syntax in a configuration file and CLI commands. You can use this feature to dynamically set values based on the current environment, such as database connection strings, API keys, and other sensitive information.

You can specify a default value for an environment variable using the ${VARIABLE:-DEFAULT_VALUE} syntax. For example, if you want to use a default value of 8080 for the HTTP_PORT environment variable if it is not defined or is empty, you can use the following configuration:

http:
  address: 127.0.0.1:${HTTP_PORT:-8080}

Note
You can find more information on Bash Environment Variable Defaults in the Bash Reference Manual.

This allows you to easily customize the configuration based on your specific environment without changing the configuration file itself.

Here's an example of a docker-compose.yaml file that redefines the HTTP_PORT for an RR service:

version: '3.8'

services:
  app:
    image: xxx
    environment:
      - HTTP_PORT=8081
...

#Dotenv

RoadRunner supports reading environment variables from .env files, which are typically used to store sensitive or environment-specific variables outside your codebase.

To read environment variables from an .env file, you can use the --dotenv CLI option when starting RoadRunner.

./rr serve --dotenv /var/www/config/.env

#CLI Commands

You can also use environment variables in CLI commands to customize the behavior of your RR server. This is especially useful when you need to pass configuration values that are environment-specific or sensitive, such as secrets or API keys.

set -a
source /var/www/config/.env
set +a

exec /var/www/rr \
  -c /var/www/.rr.yaml \
  -w /var/www \
  -o http.pool.num_workers=${RR_NUM_WORKERS:-8} \
  -o http.pool.max_jobs=${RR_MAX_JOBS:-16} \
  -o http.pool.supervisor.max_worker_memory=${RR_MAX_WORKER_MEMORY:-512}
  serve

The set -a enables automatic exporting of variables. Any variables that are defined in /var/www/config/.env will be automatically exported to the environment, making them available to any child processes that are executed from the current shell. The final set +a command disables automatic exporting of variables, ensuring that only the variables that were defined in /var/www/config/.env are exported, and preventing any unintended variables from leaking into the environment.

In this example, the following options are used:

#What's Next?

1. Server Commands - learn how to start the server.
2. Configuration plugin - learn more about the configuration plugin.
3. PHP Workers — Environment configuration - learn how to configure PHP workers environment.