Server Configuration

TIP

We manage the following parameters for you in Typesense Cloud. So this section only applies if you're self-hosting Typesense.

Using Command Line Arguments

Command line arguments can be passed to the server as --parameter=value.

Parameter	Required	Description
--config	false	Path to the configuration file. If you use this argument, you can define all of the other command line arguments in a configuration file. See the "Configuring Typesense" section for more details.
--api-key	true	A bootstrap admin API key that allows all operations. Be sure to create additional keys with specific ACLs using the key management API. NOTE: Don't expose this admin API key to your browser JS client: use the key management API to create search-only or scoped API keys.
--data-dir	true	Path to the directory where data will be stored on disk.
--api-address	false	Address to which Typesense API service binds. Default: 0.0.0.0
--api-port	false	Port on which Typesense API service listens. Default: 8108
--peering-address	false	Internal IP address to which Typesense peering service binds. If this parameter is not specified, Typesense will attempt to use the first available internal IP.
--peering-port	false	Port on which Typesense peering service listens. Default: 8107
--nodes	false	Path to file containing comma separated string of all nodes in the cluster.
--log-dir	false	By default, Typesense logs to stdout and stderr. To enable logging to a file, provide a path to a logging directory.
--ssl-certificate	false	Path to the SSL certificate file. You must also define ssl-certificate-key to enable HTTPS.
--ssl-certificate-key	false	Path to the SSL certificate key file. You must also define ssl-certificate to enable HTTPS.
--ssl-refresh-interval-seconds	false	Frequency of automatic reloading of SSL certs from disk. Default: 8 * 60 * 60.
--enable-cors	false	Allow JavaScript client to access Typesense directly from the browser.
--thread-pool-size	false	Number of threads used for handling concurrent requests. Default: NUM_CORES * 8.
--num-collections-parallel-load	false	Number of collections that are loaded in parallel during start up. Default: NUM_CORES * 4.
--num-documents-parallel-load	false	Number of documents per collection that are indexed in parallel during start up. Default: 1000.
--healthy-read-lag	false	Reads are rejected if the updates lag behind this threshold. Default: 1000.
--healthy-write-lag	false	Writes are rejected if the updates lag behind this threshold. Default: 500.
--snapshot-interval-seconds	false	Frequency of replication log snapshots. Default: 3600 follower recovery. NOTE: Frequent snapshotting helps in faster recovery from a cold start. However, if this value is too low for a large dataset, repeated snapshotting can actually slow down follower recovery.
--log-slow-requests-time-ms	false	Requests that take over this amount of time (in milliseconds) are logged. Default: -1 which disables slow request logging. You can also dynamically enable slow requests logging via the /config API.

Using a Configuration File

As an alternative to command line arguments, you can also configure Typesense server through a configuration file or via environment variables.

Command line arguments are given the highest priority, while environment variables are given the least priority.

Our Linux DEB/RPM packages install the configuration file at /etc/typesense/typesense-server.ini.

The configuration file uses a simple INI format:

Using Environment Variables

If you wish to use environment variables, you can do that too. The environment variables map to the command line arguments documented above: just use CAPS and underscores instead of hyphens, and prefix the variable names with TYPESENSE_.

For example, use TYPESENSE_DATA_DIR for the --data-dir argument.