ihatemoney/docs/configuration.md

(configuration)=

Configuration

"ihatemoney" relies on a configuration file. If you run the application for the first time, you will need to take a few moments to configure the application properly.

The default values given here are those for the development mode. To know defaults on your deployed instance, simply look at your ihatemoney.cfg file.

"Production values" are the recommended values for use in production.

Configuration files

By default, Ihatemoney loads its configuration from /etc/ihatemoney/ihatemoney.cfg.

If you need to load the configuration from a custom path, you can define the IHATEMONEY_SETTINGS_FILE_PATH environment variable with the path to the configuration file. For instance :

export IHATEMONEY_SETTINGS_FILE_PATH="/path/to/your/conf/file.cfg"

The path should be absolute. A relative path will be interpreted as being inside /etc/ihatemoney/.

SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI

Specifies the type of backend to use and its location. More information on the format used can be found on the SQLAlchemy documentation.

• Default value: sqlite:///tmp/ihatemoney.db
• Production value: Set it to some path on your disk. Typically sqlite:///home/ihatemoney/ihatemoney.db. Do not store it under /tmp as this folder is cleared at each boot.

For example, if you're using MariaDB, use a configuration similar to the following:

SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = 'mysql+pymysql://user:pass@localhost/mydb'

If you're using PostgreSQL, your client must use utf8. Unfortunately, PostgreSQL default is to use ASCII. Either change your client settings, or specify the encoding by appending ?client_encoding=utf8 to the connection string. This will look like:

SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = 'postgresql://myuser:mypass@localhost/mydb?client_encoding=utf8'

SECRET_KEY

The secret key used to encrypt cookies and generate secure tokens. They are used to authenticate access to projects, both through the web interface and through the API.

As such, you should never use a predictible secret key: an attacker with the knowledge of the secret key could easily access any project and bypass the private code verification.

• Production value: ihatemoney conf-example ihatemoney.cfg sets it to something random, which should be good.

SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE

A boolean that controls whether the session cookie will be marked "secure". If this is the case, browsers will refuse to send the session cookie over plain HTTP.

• Default value: True
• Production value: True if you run your service over HTTPS, False if you run your service over plain HTTP.

Note: this setting is actually interpreted by Flask, see the Flask documentation for details.

MAIL_DEFAULT_SENDER

A python tuple describing the name and email address to use when sending emails.

• Default value: ("Budget manager", "admin@example.com")
• Production value: Any tuple you want.

SHOW_ADMIN_EMAIL

A boolean that determines whether the admin email (MAIL_DEFAULT_SENDER) is shown in error messages. This also needs MAIL_DEFAULT_SENDER to be set to a non default value to show it in the error messages.

• Default value: True
• Production value: Usually True unless you don't want the admin email to be shown for privacy reasons.

ACTIVATE_DEMO_PROJECT

If set to True, a demo project will be available on the frontpage.

• Default value: True
• Production value: Usually, you will want to set it to False for a private instance.

ADMIN_PASSWORD

Hashed password to access protected endpoints. If left empty, all administrative tasks are disabled.

• Default value: "" (empty string)
• Production value: To generate the proper password HASH, use ihatemoney generate_password_hash and copy the output into the value of ADMIN_PASSWORD.

ALLOW_PUBLIC_PROJECT_CREATION

If set to True, everyone can create a project without entering the admin password. If set to False, the password needs to be entered (and as such, defined in the settings).

• Default value: True.

ACTIVATE_ADMIN_DASHBOARD

If set to True, the dashboard will become accessible entering the admin password, if set to True, a non empty ADMIN_PASSWORD needs to be set.

• Default value: False

APPLICATION_ROOT

If empty, ihatemoney will be served at domain root (e.g: http://domain.tld), if set to "somestring", it will be served from a "folder" (e.g: http://domain.tld/somestring).

• Default value: "" (empty string)

BABEL_DEFAULT_TIMEZONE

The timezone that will be used to convert date and time when displaying them to the user (all times are always stored in UTC internally). If not set, it will default to the timezone configured on the Operating System of the server running ihatemoney, which may or may not be what you want.

• Default value: unset (use the timezone of the server Operating System)
• Production value: Set to the timezone of your expected users, with a format such as "Europe/Paris". See this list of TZ database names for a complete list.

Note: this setting is actually interpreted by Flask-Babel, see the Flask-Babel guide for formatting dates for details.

ENABLE_CAPTCHA

It is possible to add a simple captcha in order to filter out spammer bots on the form creation. In order to do so, you just have to set ENABLE_CAPTCHA = True.

• Default value: False
• Production value: True is recommended to get spam-robots away.

LEGAL_LINK

You may want to point to a special legal page, for instance to give information about GDPR, or how you handle the data of your users.

If you want to do this, you can use the LEGAL_LINK setting. Set it to the URL you want.

• Default value: "" (empty string)
• Production value: The URL of your chosing.

Configuring email sending

By default, Ihatemoney sends emails using a local SMTP server, but it's possible to configure it to act differently, thanks to the great Flask-Mail project

• MAIL_SERVER : default 'localhost'
• MAIL_PORT : default 25
• MAIL_USE_TLS : default False
• MAIL_USE_SSL : default False
• MAIL_DEBUG : default app.debug
• MAIL_USERNAME : default None
• MAIL_PASSWORD : default None
• DEFAULT_MAIL_SENDER : default None