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CONFIGURATION.md

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Environment Variables in Travel Advisor

This document provides information on using environment variables with the TravelAdvisor application.

Overview

TravelAdvisor supports environment variables for configuring various API keys and settings. This approach allows you to:

  • Keep sensitive configuration out of your codebase
  • Easily change configuration without modifying code
  • Support different environments (development, testing, production)
  • Simplify deployment to Cloud Foundry or other platforms

Supported Configuration Methods

TravelAdvisor supports multiple ways to configure the application:

  1. Environment Variables - System-level or process-level environment variables
  2. .env Files - Local environment variable files for development
  3. User Secrets - The .NET user secrets system for local development
  4. Cloud Foundry Service Bindings - When running in Cloud Foundry

The application loads configuration in the following order (later sources override earlier ones):

  1. Default values
  2. .env file values
  3. User secrets
  4. System environment variables
  5. Cloud Foundry service bindings

Environment Variable Naming

In ASP.NET Core, environment variables with double underscores (__) are automatically mapped to configuration sections. For example:

  • GENAI__APIKEY maps to GenAI:ApiKey in the configuration
  • GOOGLEMAPS__APIKEY maps to GoogleMaps:ApiKey in the configuration

Using .env Files

For local development, you can create a .env file in the project root. This file should contain your environment variables in the format:

KEY=VALUE

Example .env file:

# GenAI Configuration
GENAI__APIKEY=your_genai_api_key_here
GENAI__APIURL=https://api.openai.com/v1
GENAI__MODEL=gpt-4o-mini
GENAI__SERVICENAME=travel-advisor-llm

# GoogleMaps Configuration
GOOGLEMAPS__APIKEY=your_googlemaps_api_key_here

The application will automatically load this file at startup.

Setup Instructions

  1. Copy the example file:

    cp .env.example .env

  2. Edit the .env file and replace the placeholder values with your actual API keys.

  3. Run the application normally:

    dotnet run --project src/TravelAdvisor.Web

Available Environment Variables

GenAI Configuration

Environment Variable Configuration Key Description Default
GENAI__APIKEY GenAI:ApiKey API key for the GenAI service (required)
GENAI__APIURL GenAI:ApiUrl API URL for the GenAI service https://api.openai.com/v1
GENAI__MODEL GenAI:Model Model name to use gpt-4o-mini
GENAI__SERVICENAME GenAI:ServiceName Service name for Cloud Foundry binding travel-advisor-llm

Google Maps Configuration

Environment Variable Configuration Key Description Default
GOOGLEMAPS__APIKEY GoogleMaps:ApiKey API key for Google Maps (required)

Cloud Foundry Service Bindings

When deploying to Cloud Foundry, you can bind your application to services. TravelAdvisor will detect services with names containing "genai" or tagged with "genai" and automatically use their credentials.

Example service binding:

applications:
- name: travel-advisor
  services:
  - travel-advisor-llm

User-Provided Services

You can create a user-provided service with your credentials:

cf create-user-provided-service travel-advisor-llm -p '{"api_key":"your_api_key", "api_url":"https://api.openai.com/v1", "model":"gpt-4o-mini"}'

Then bind it to your application:

cf bind-service travel-advisor travel-advisor-llm

Troubleshooting

If you're experiencing issues with environment variables:

  1. Check that your .env file is in the correct location (project root)
  2. Verify that the environment variables are formatted correctly (e.g., GENAI__APIKEY not GENAI_APIKEY)
  3. Check for any console log messages about environment variable loading
  4. Try setting the environment variables directly in your terminal session
  5. Restart your application after making changes to environment variables