Environment Variables¶

Website Defender uses environment variables at build time to configure frontend paths and backend host settings. These values are embedded into the compiled binary during the build process.

Build Time vs Runtime

These environment variables are injected during the build (scripts/build.sh) and compiled into the binary. They cannot be changed after building. For runtime configuration, see Configuration.

Available Variables¶

Variable	Default	Description
`BACKEND_HOST`	`http://localhost:9999/wall`	The backend API host URL used by the frontend
`ROOT_PATH`	`/wall`	The root path context for all routes
`ADMIN_PATH`	`/admin`	The path for the admin dashboard
`GUARD_PATH`	`/guard`	The path for the guard (challenge/login) page

Usage¶

Via Environment Variables¶

Set the variables before running the build script:

export BACKEND_HOST="https://defender.example.com/wall"
export ROOT_PATH="/wall"
export ADMIN_PATH="/admin"
export GUARD_PATH="/guard"

./scripts/build.sh

Via .env File¶

Create a .env file in the project root. The build script automatically loads it:

BACKEND_HOST=https://defender.example.com/wall
ROOT_PATH=/wall
ADMIN_PATH=/admin
GUARD_PATH=/guard

Then build normally:

./scripts/build.sh

How It Works¶

The build script (scripts/build.sh) performs the following:

Reads environment variables (with defaults if not set)
Exports them as VITE_* variables for the Vue 3 frontend builds
Passes them as Go ldflags to embed in the backend binary

# Frontend receives them as VITE_ prefixed variables
export VITE_BACKEND_HOST=$BACKEND_HOST
export VITE_ROOT_PATH=$ROOT_PATH

# Backend receives them via ldflags
go build -ldflags "-X 'main.BackendHost=$BACKEND_HOST' ..." -o app main.go

URL Structure¶

With the default configuration, the application serves at:

Resource	URL
Admin Dashboard	`http://localhost:9999/wall/admin/`
Guard Page	`http://localhost:9999/wall/guard/`
API Root	`http://localhost:9999/wall/`
Auth Endpoint	`http://localhost:9999/wall/auth`
Login Endpoint	`http://localhost:9999/wall/login`

Custom Path Example

If you set ROOT_PATH=/defender and ADMIN_PATH=/dashboard, the admin URL becomes http://localhost:9999/defender/dashboard/.