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Spring Community is configured entirely through environment variables and application.properties. All required secrets — specifically the database password and the JWT signing key — must be present in the environment at startup; the application will fail to start if either is missing, since no default value is provided for them.

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Required Variables

These two variables have no default value and must always be explicitly set.
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DB_PASSWORD
string
required
The password for the PostgreSQL database user. Maps to spring.datasource.password in application.properties. There is no default — omitting this variable causes a startup failure.
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JWT_SECRET
string
required
A base64-encoded HMAC signing key used to sign and verify all JWT access and refresh tokens. Must be a sufficiently long random string to be cryptographically secure. There is no default — omitting this variable causes a startup failure.

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Database Variables

The following variables control the PostgreSQL data source. DB_URL and DB_USER have sensible local defaults; DB_PASSWORD is always required.
VariableDefaultDescription
DB_URLjdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/communitydbFull JDBC connection URL for the PostgreSQL instance. In Docker Compose this is overridden to jdbc:postgresql://postgres:5432/communitydb to target the postgres service.
DB_USERpostgresPostgreSQL login username. Maps to spring.datasource.username.
DB_PASSWORD(none)PostgreSQL login password. Maps to spring.datasource.password. Required.
When running with Docker Compose, the app service sets SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:postgresql://postgres:5432/communitydb and SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME=postgres to connect to the companion postgres container. The local defaults in application.properties are only used when running outside of Docker.

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JWT Variables

Spring Community issues two token types: a short-lived access token and a long-lived refresh token. Both are signed with the same JWT_SECRET.
VariableDefaultDescription
JWT_SECRET(none)Base64-encoded HMAC secret key. Required.
JWT_EXPIRATION3600000Access token time-to-live in milliseconds. Default is 1 hour (3 600 000 ms).
JWT_REFRESH_EXPIRATION604800000Refresh token time-to-live in milliseconds. Default is 7 days (604 800 000 ms).
These values map to the following application.properties bindings: 
jwt.secret=${JWT_SECRET}
jwt.expiration=${JWT_EXPIRATION:3600000}
jwt.refresh.expiration=${JWT_REFRESH_EXPIRATION:604800000}

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Application Variables

The remaining properties govern JPA schema management, file upload limits, and image storage. They all have safe defaults and are rarely changed in development.
PropertyDefaultDescription
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-autoupdateHibernate DDL strategy. update creates or modifies tables on startup to match your entity classes without dropping existing data.
spring.servlet.multipart.max-file-size5MBMaximum size for a single uploaded file (event banners and profile images).
spring.servlet.multipart.max-request-size5MBMaximum size for an entire multipart HTTP request.
storage.locationimagesLocal filesystem directory where uploaded images are stored, relative to the application working directory.

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Docker Compose .env Example

When running with Docker Compose, create a .env file in the project root. Docker Compose automatically reads this file and substitutes the variables into docker-compose.yml. 
# .env  — never commit this file to version control

# PostgreSQL
DB_PASSWORD=supersecretdbpassword

# Spring datasource (used by the app service via SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD)
SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=supersecretdbpassword

# JWT signing key — generate with: openssl rand -base64 64
JWT_SECRET=dGhpcyBpcyBhIHZlcnkgbG9uZyBhbmQgc2VjdXJlIHNlY3JldCBrZXkgZm9yIEpXVA==
The docker-compose.yml passes these into the app service like so: 
services:
  app:
    environment:
      - JWT_SECRET=${JWT_SECRET}
      - JWT_EXPIRATION=36000000
      - JWT_REFRESH_EXPIRATION=604800000
      - SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL=jdbc:postgresql://postgres:5432/communitydb
      - SPRING_DATASOURCE_USERNAME=postgres
      - SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD=${SPRING_DATASOURCE_PASSWORD}

  postgres:
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=communitydb
      - POSTGRES_USER=postgres
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${DB_PASSWORD}
JWT_EXPIRATION is hardcoded to 36000000 (10 hours) directly in docker-compose.yml and is not read from .env. The application.properties default of 3600000 (1 hour) applies only when running outside of Docker. To change the Docker container value, edit docker-compose.yml directly.
Never commit JWT_SECRET or DB_PASSWORD to version control. Add .env to your .gitignore immediately. Exposing these values allows anyone to forge valid authentication tokens or gain direct access to your database.

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