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Life Cost reads all runtime configuration from environment variables. When running locally, these variables are loaded automatically from a .env file in the project root via python-dotenv. In Docker or any other deployment environment, they are supplied directly as container environment variables. None of the three required variables have defaults — the application will fail to start if any of them are missing or incorrect.

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Required Variables

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DATABASE_URL
string
required
MySQL connection string used by SQLAlchemy to connect to the database.Format: mysql://user:password@host:port/dbnameExample: mysql://admin:secret@localhost/life_dbThe port segment (:3306) may be omitted when using the MySQL default port.
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GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID
string
required
OAuth 2.0 client ID issued by Google Cloud Console. Obtained when you create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID credential for a Web Application. Looks like xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.apps.googleusercontent.com.
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GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET
string
required
OAuth 2.0 client secret paired with GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID. Keep this value out of version control — never commit it to a public repository.

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.env File Example

Create a file named .env at the project root. python-dotenv will load it automatically when the app starts. 
DATABASE_URL=mysql://admin:secret@localhost/life_db
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=your-client-secret
SECRET_KEY is auto-generated on every startup. The app calls os.urandom(24) to produce a new secret key each time it launches:
app.config['SECRET_KEY'] = os.urandom(24)
This means all active browser sessions are invalidated whenever the process restarts. For persistent sessions across restarts or across multiple workers, set SECRET_KEY to a fixed, cryptographically random value in your environment.
OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT is hardcoded to '1' in the application source. This setting tells the OAuth library to allow the OAuth flow over plain HTTP, which is required during local development but is a security risk in production:
os.environ['OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT'] = '1'
In production you should serve Life Cost exclusively over HTTPS (e.g., behind an nginx or Caddy TLS terminator) and remove or unset this environment variable before deploying. Leaving it enabled over HTTP in production exposes OAuth tokens in transit.

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Passing Variables via Docker Compose

When using the bundled docker-compose.yml, set the three variables under the environment key of the app service. Do not hard-code real secrets in the compose file — use shell variable substitution or a secrets manager in production. 
services:
  app:
    image: akevalion/life:0.0.9.Release
    container_name: life_app
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: "mysql://admin:secret@mysql_container/life_db"
      GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID: "your-client-id.apps.googleusercontent.com"
      GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET: "your-client-secret"
    ports:
      - "5000:3000"
The app container exposes port 3000 internally; the example above maps it to 5000 on the host. Adjust the host-side port as needed for your environment.

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