Environment configuration reference

Open Zaak can be ran both as a Docker container or directly on a VPS or dedicated server. It relies on other services, such as database and cache backends, which can be configured through environment variables.

Available environment variables

Required

SECRET_KEY: Secret key that’s used for certain cryptographic utilities. .
ALLOWED_HOSTS: a comma separated (without spaces!) list of domains that serve the installation. Used to protect against Host header attacks. Defaults to: (empty string).
CACHE_DEFAULT: redis cache address for the default cache (this MUST be set when using Docker). Defaults to: localhost:6379/0.
CACHE_AXES: redis cache address for the brute force login protection cache (this MUST be set when using Docker). Defaults to: localhost:6379/0.
EMAIL_HOST: hostname for the outgoing e-mail server (this MUST be set when using Docker). Defaults to: localhost.

Database

DB_NAME: name of the PostgreSQL database. Defaults to: openzaak.
DB_USER: username of the database user. Defaults to: openzaak.
DB_PASSWORD: password of the database user. Defaults to: openzaak.
DB_HOST: hostname of the PostgreSQL database. Defaults to db for the docker environment, otherwise defaults to localhost.
DB_PORT: port number of the database. Defaults to: 5432.

Celery

CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND: the URL of the backend/broker that will be used by Celery to send the notifications. Defaults to: redis://localhost:6379/1.

Elastic APM

ELASTIC_APM_SERVER_URL: URL where Elastic APM is hosted. Defaults to: None.
ELASTIC_APM_SERVICE_NAME: Name of the service for this application in Elastic APM. Defaults to openzaak - <environment>.
ELASTIC_APM_SECRET_TOKEN: Token used to communicate with Elastic APM. Defaults to: default.
ELASTIC_APM_TRANSACTION_SAMPLE_RATE: By default, the agent will sample every transaction (e.g. request to your service). To reduce overhead and storage requirements, set the sample rate to a value between 0.0 and 1.0. Defaults to: 0.1.

Content Security Policy

CSP_EXTRA_DEFAULT_SRC: Extra default source URLs for CSP other than self. Used for img-src, style-src and script-src. Defaults to: [].
CSP_REPORT_URI: URI of the``report-uri`` directive. Defaults to: None.
CSP_REPORT_PERCENTAGE: Percentage of requests that get the report-uri directive. Defaults to: 0.
CSP_EXTRA_FORM_ACTION: Add additional form-action source to the default . Defaults to: [].
CSP_FORM_ACTION: Override the default form-action source. Defaults to: ['"\'self\'"'].
CSP_EXTRA_IMG_SRC: Extra img-src sources for CSP other than CSP_DEFAULT_SRC. Defaults to: [].
CSP_OBJECT_SRC: object-src urls. Defaults to: ['"\'none\'"'].

CMIS

CMIS_ENABLED: whether to enable the CMIS adapter. Defaults to: False.
CMIS_MAPPER_FILE: name of the file containing the mapping between the Django and Document Management System names for document properties. See the installation section for more details. Defaults to the absolute path of open-zaak/config/cmis_mapper.json.
CMIS_URL_MAPPING_ENABLED: enable the URL shortener when using the CMIS adapter. Defaults to: False.

Documenten import

IMPORT_RETENTION_DAYS: an integer which specifies the number of days after which Import instances will be deleted. Defaults to: 7.
IMPORT_DOCUMENTEN_BASE_DIR: a string value which specifies the absolute path of a directory used for bulk importing EnkelvoudigInformatieObject’s. This value is used to determine the file path for each row in the import metadata file. By default this is the same directory as the projects directory (BASE_DIR).
IMPORT_DOCUMENTEN_BATCH_SIZE: is the number of rows that will be processed at a time. Used for bulk importing EnkelvoudigInformatieObject’s. Defaults to: 500.

Optional

SITE_ID: The database ID of the site object. You usually won’t have to touch this. Defaults to: 1.
DEBUG: Only set this to True on a local development environment. Various other security settings are derived from this setting!. Defaults to: False.
USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST: whether to grab the domain/host from the X-Forwarded-Host header or not. This header is typically set by reverse proxies (such as nginx, traefik, Apache…). Note: this is a header that can be spoofed and you need to ensure you control it before enabling this. Defaults to: False.
IS_HTTPS: Used to construct absolute URLs and controls a variety of security settings. Defaults to the inverse of DEBUG.
EMAIL_PORT: port number of the outgoing e-mail server. Note that if you’re on Google Cloud, sending e-mail via port 25 is completely blocked and you should use 487 for TLS. Defaults to: 25.
EMAIL_HOST_USER: username to connect to the mail server. Defaults to: (empty string).
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD: password to connect to the mail server. Defaults to: (empty string).
EMAIL_USE_TLS: whether to use TLS or not to connect to the mail server. Should be True if you’re changing the EMAIL_PORT to 487. Defaults to: False.
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL: The default email address from which emails are sent. Defaults to: openzaak@example.com.
LOG_STDOUT: whether to log to stdout or not. Defaults to: True.
LOG_LEVEL: control the verbosity of logging output. Available values are CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO and DEBUG. Defaults to: WARNING.
LOG_QUERIES: enable (query) logging at the database backend level. Note that you must also set DEBUG=1, which should be done very sparingly!. Defaults to: False.
LOG_REQUESTS: enable logging of the outgoing requests. Defaults to: False.
CELERY_LOGLEVEL: control the verbosity of logging output for celery, independent of LOG_LEVEL. Available values are CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, INFO and DEBUG. Defaults to: INFO.
SESSION_COOKIE_AGE: For how long, in seconds, the session cookie will be valid. Defaults to: 1209600.
SESSION_COOKIE_SAMESITE: The value of the SameSite flag on the session cookie. This flag prevents the cookie from being sent in cross-site requests thus preventing CSRF attacks and making some methods of stealing session cookie impossible.Currently interferes with OIDC. Keep the value set at Lax if used. Defaults to: Lax.
CSRF_COOKIE_SAMESITE: The value of the SameSite flag on the CSRF cookie. This flag prevents the cookie from being sent in cross-site requests. Defaults to: Strict.
ENVIRONMENT: An identifier for the environment, displayed in the admin depending on the settings module used and included in the error monitoring (see SENTRY_DSN). The default is set according to DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE.
SUBPATH: If hosted on a subpath, provide the value here. If you provide /gateway, the component assumes its running at the base URL: https://somedomain/gateway/. Defaults to an empty string. Defaults to: None.
RELEASE: The version number or commit hash of the application (this is also sent to Sentry).
NUM_PROXIES: the number of reverse proxies in front of the application, as an integer. This is used to determine the actual client IP adres. On Kubernetes with an ingress you typically want to set this to 2. Defaults to: 1.
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS: A list of trusted origins for unsafe requests (e.g. POST). Defaults to: [].
NOTIFICATIONS_DISABLED: indicates whether or not notifications should be sent to the Notificaties API for operations on the API endpoints. Defaults to True for the dev environment, otherwise defaults to False.
SITE_DOMAIN: Defines the primary domain where the application is hosted. Defaults to: (empty string).
SENTRY_DSN: URL of the sentry project to send error reports to. Default empty, i.e. -> no monitoring set up. Highly recommended to configure this.
DISABLE_2FA: Whether or not two factor authentication should be disabled. Defaults to: False.
LOG_OUTGOING_REQUESTS_EMIT_BODY: Whether or not outgoing request bodies should be logged. Defaults to: True.
LOG_OUTGOING_REQUESTS_DB_SAVE: Whether or not outgoing request logs should be saved to the database. Defaults to: False.
LOG_OUTGOING_REQUESTS_DB_SAVE_BODY: Whether or not outgoing request bodies should be saved to the database. Defaults to: True.
LOG_OUTGOING_REQUESTS_MAX_AGE: The amount of time after which request logs should be deleted from the database. Defaults to: 7.
DB_CONN_MAX_AGE: maximum age of a database connection, in seconds. This reduces overhead of connecting to the database server for every request. Defaults to: None.
GEOS_LIBRARY_PATH: Full path to the GEOS library used by GeoDjango. In most circumstances, this can be left empty. Defaults to: None.
GDAL_LIBRARY_PATH: Full path to the GDAL library used by GeoDjango. In most circumstances, this can be left empty. Defaults to: None.
OPENZAAK_DOMAIN: a [host]:[port] or [host] value indicating the canonical domain where Open Zaak is hosted/deployed, e.g. openzaak.example.com:8443. This value is used (together with IS_HTTPS) when fully qualified URLs need to be constructed without HTTP request context available. Deriving the domain from the OPENZAAK_DOMAIN and Sites configuration will soon be deprecated, please migrate to the SITE_DOMAIN setting.
OPENZAAK_REWRITE_HOST: whether to rewrite the request host of all incoming requests with the value of OPENZAAK_DOMAIN, discarding the original Host header or headers set by reverse proxies. Useful if you provide the services only via the NLX network, for example. Defaults to False and conflicts with USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST.
MIN_UPLOAD_SIZE: the max allowed size of POST bodies, in bytes. Defaults to 4GiB. Note that you should also configure your web server to allow this. Defaults to: 4294967296.
DOCUMENTEN_UPLOAD_CHUNK_SIZE: chunk size in bytes for large file uploads - determines the size for a single upload chunk. Note that making this larger than MIN_UPLOAD_SIZE breaks large file uploads. Defaults to: 4294967296.
DOCUMENTEN_UPLOAD_READ_CHUNK: chunk size in bytes for large file uploads - when merging upload chunks, this determines the number of bytes read to copy to the destination file. Defaults to 6 MiB.
SENDFILE_BACKEND: which backend to use for authorization-secured upload downloads. Defaults to sendfile.backends.nginx. See django-sendfile2 for available backends. Defaults to: django_sendfile.backends.nginx.
LOOSE_FK_LOCAL_BASE_URLS: explicitly list the allowed prefixes of local urls. Defaults to an empty list. This setting can be used to separate local and external urls, when Open Zaak and other services are deployed within the same domain or API Gateway. If this setting is not defined, all urls with the same host as in the request are considered local. Example: LOOSE_FK_LOCAL_BASE_URLS=http://api.example.nl/ozgv-t/zaken/,http://api.example.nl/ozgv-t/catalogi/,http://api.example.nl/ozgv-t/autorisaties/. Defaults to: [].
EXTRA_VERIFY_CERTS: a comma-separated list of paths to certificates to trust, If you’re using self-signed certificates for the services that Open Notificaties communicates with, specify the path to those (root) certificates here, rather than disabling SSL certificate verification. Example: EXTRA_VERIFY_CERTS=/etc/ssl/root1.crt,/etc/ssl/root2.crt.
CURL_CA_BUNDLE: if this variable is set to an empty string, it disables SSL/TLS certificate verification. Even calls from Open Zaak to other services such as the Selectie Lijst will be disabled, so this variable should be used with care to prevent unwanted side-effects.
ZAAK_IDENTIFICATIE_GENERATOR: The method of Zaak.identificatie generation. Possible values are: use-creation-year, use-start-datum-year . Defaults to: use-start-datum-year.
JWT_EXPIRY: duration a JWT is considered to be valid, in seconds. Defaults to: 3600.
JWT_LEEWAY: JWT validation has a time aspect, usually in the form of the iat and nbf claims. Clock drift between server and client can occur. This setting allows specifying the leeway in seconds, and defaults to 0 (no leeway). It is advised to not make this larger than a couple of minutes.
ZAAK_EIGENSCHAP_WAARDE_VALIDATION: if this variable is set to true, yes or 1, ZaakEigenschap.waarde property would be validated against the related Eigenschap.specificatie. Defaults to: False.
FUZZY_PAGINATION: if this variable is set to true, yes or 1, fuzzy pagination will be applied to all paginated API endpoints. This is to optimize performance of the endpoints and results in the count property to return a non-exact (fuzzy) value. Defaults to: False.
FUZZY_PAGINATION_COUNT_LIMIT: an integer value to indicate the maximum number of objects where the exact count is calculated in pagination when FUZZY_PAGINATION is enabled. Defaults to: 500.

Initial superuser creation

A clean installation of Open Zaak comes without pre-installed or pre-configured admin user by default.

Users of Open Zaak can opt-in to provision an initial superuser via environment variables. The user will only be created if it doesn’t exist yet.

OPENZAAK_SUPERUSER_USERNAME: specify the username of the superuser to create. Setting this to a non-empty value will enable the creation of the superuser. Default empty.
OPENZAAK_SUPERUSER_EMAIL: specify the e-mail address to configure for the superuser. Defaults to admin@admin.org. Only has an effect if OPENZAAK_SUPERUSER_USERNAME is set.
DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD: specify the password for the superuser. Default empty, which means the superuser will be created without password. Only has an effect if OPENZAAK_SUPERUSER_USERNAME is set.

Advanced application server options

Open Zaak uses uWSGI under the hood, which can be configured with a myriad of options. Most of these can be provided as environment variables as well. The following option is one you may need with Open Zaak.

UWSGI_HTTP_TIMEOUT - defaults to 60s. If Open Zaak does not complete the request within this timeout, then uWSGI will error out. This has been observed with certain CMIS implementations causing slow requests where 60s is not sufficient.

Initial configuration

Open Zaak supports setup_configuration management command, which allows configuration via environment variables. All these environment variables are described at Open Zaak configuration (CLI).

Specifying the environment variables

There are two strategies to specify the environment variables:

provide them in a .env file
start the component processes (with uwsgi/gunicorn/celery) in a process manager that defines the environment variables

Providing a .env file

This is the most simple setup and easiest to debug. The .env file must be at the root of the project - i.e. on the same level as the src directory ( NOT in the src directory).

The syntax is key-value:

SOME_VAR=some_value
OTHER_VAR="quoted_value"

Provide the envvars via the process manager

If you use a process manager (such as supervisor/systemd), use their techniques to define the envvars. The component will pick them up out of the box.