Configure Medusa Backend

In this document, you’ll learn what configurations you can add to your Medusa backend and how to add them.

Prerequisites

This document assumes you already followed along with the “Set up your development environment” documentation and have installed a Medusa backend.

Medusa Configurations File

The configurations for your Medusa backend are in medusa-config.js. This includes database, Redis, and plugin configurations, among other configurations.

Some of the configurations mentioned in this document are already defined in medusa-config.js with default values. It’s important that you know what these configurations are used for and how to set them.

Environment Variables

In your configurations, you’ll often use environment variables. For example, when using API keys or setting your database URL.

By default, Medusa loads environment variables from the system’s environment variables. Any different method you prefer to use or other location you’d prefer to load environment variables from you need to manually implement.

This change in how environment variables are loaded was introduced in version 1.3.0. You can learn more in the upgrade guide for version 1.3.0.

Database Configuration

Medusa supports two database types: SQLite and PostgreSQL.

You can use SQLite for development purposes, however, it’s recommended to use PostgreSQL.

SQLite Configurations

For SQLite you mainly need two configurations:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    database_type: "sqlite",
    database_database: "./medusa-db.sql",
  },
}

Where database_type is sqlite and database_database is the location you want the SQLite database to be created in.

PostgreSQL Configurations

Before getting started with configuring PostgreSQL, you should have created a PostgreSQL database. You can check how to create a database in PostgreSQL's documentation.

For PostgreSQL you mainly need two configurations:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    database_type: "postgres",
    database_url: DATABASE_URL,
  },
}

Where database_type is postgres and DATABASE_URL is the URL connection string to your PostgreSQL database. You can check out how to format it in PostgreSQL’s documentation.

It's recommended to set the Database URL as an environment variable:

DATABASE_URL=<YOUR_DATABASE_URL>

Where <YOUR_DATABASE_URL> is the URL of your PostgreSQL database.

Changing PostgreSQL Schema

By default, the public schema is used in PostgreSQL. You can change it to use a custom schema by passing the search_path option in the database URL. For example:

postgres://localhost/store?options=-c search_path=test

Where test is the name of the database schema that should be used instead of public.

Changing Database Type

Remember to run migrations after you change your database type to postgres from another type:

medusa migrations run

Common Configuration

As Medusa internally uses Typeorm to connect to the database, the following configurations are also available:

database_logging: enable or disable logging.
database_extra: extra options that you can pass to the underlying database driver.

These configurations are not required and can be omitted.

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    database_logging: true,
    database_extra: {},
  },
}

Redis

Medusa uses Redis to handle the event queue, among other usages. You need to set Redis URL in the configurations:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    redis_url: REDIS_URL,
  },
}

Where REDIS_URL is the URL used to connect to Redis. The format of the connection string is redis[s]://[[username][:password]@][host][:port][/db-number].

If you omit this configuration, events will not be emitted and subscribers will not work.

By default, the Redis connection string should be redis://localhost:6379 unless you made any changes to the default configurations during the installation.

It is recommended to set the Redis URL as an environment variable:

REDIS_URL=<YOUR_REDIS_URL>

Where <YOUR_REDIS_URL> is the URL of your Redis backend.

You can learn more about Subscribers and events in the Subscriber documentation.

JWT Secret

Medusa uses JSON Web Token (JWT) to handle user authentication. To set the JWT secret:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    jwt_secret: "very secure string",
  },
}

Where jwt_secret is the secret used to create the tokens. The more secure it is the better.

It is recommended to set the JWT Secret as an environment variable:

JWT_SECRET=<YOUR_JWT_SECRET>

Where <YOUR_JWT_SECRET> is the JWT secret you want to use.

In a development environment, if this option is not set the default secret is “supersecret”. However, in production, if this option is not set an error will be thrown and your backend will crash.

This configuration is used to sign the session ID cookie. To set the cookie secret:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    cookie_secret: "very secure string",
  },
}

Where cookie_secret is the secret used to create the tokens. The more secure it is the better.

It is recommended to set the Cookie secret as an environment variable:

COOKIE_SECRET=<YOUR_COOKIE_SECRET>

Where <YOUR_COOKIE_SECRET> is the Cookie secret you want to use.

In a development environment, if this option is not set the default secret is “supersecret”. However, in production, if this option is not set an error will be thrown and your backend will crash.

CORS Configurations

Medusa uses Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to only allow specific origins to access the backend.

The Admin and the Storefront have different CORS configurations that must be configured.

Accepted Patterns

For both of the Admin and the Storefront CORS configurations, the value is expected to be a string. This string can be a comma-separated list of accepted origins. Every origin in that list can be of the following types:

The accepted origin as is. For example, http://localhost:8000.
A regular expression pattern that can match more than one origin. For example, *.example.com. The regex pattern that the backend tests for is ^([\/~@;%#'])(.*?)\1([gimsuy]*)$.

Here are some examples of common use cases:

# Allow different ports locally starting with 700
ADMIN_CORS=/http:\/\/localhost:700\d+$/

# Allow any origin ending with vercel.app. For example, storefront.vercel.app
STORE_CORS=/vercel\.app$/

# Allow all HTTP requests
ADMIN_CORS=/http:\/\/*/

Although this is not recommended, but when setting these values directly in medusa-config.json, make sure to add an extra escaping backslash for every backslash in the pattern. For example:

const ADMIN_CORS = process.env.ADMIN_CORS || 
  "/http:\\/\\/localhost:700\\d+$/"

The examples above apply to both Admin and Store CORS.

Admin CORS

To make sure your Admin dashboard can access the Medusa backend’s admin endpoints, set this configuration:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    admin_cors: ADMIN_CORS,
  },
}

Where ADMIN_CORS is the URL of your admin dashboard. By default, it’s http://localhost:7000,http://localhost:7001.

It is recommended to set the Admin CORS as an environment variable:

ADMIN_CORS=<YOUR_ADMIN_CORS>

Where <YOUR_ADMIN_CORS> is the URL of your admin dashboard.

Make sure that the URL is without a backslash at the end. For example, you should use http://localhost:7000 instead of http://localhost:7000/.

Storefront CORS

To make sure your Storefront dashboard can access the Medusa backend, set this configuration:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // ...other configurations
    store_cors: STORE_CORS,
  },
}

Where STORE_CORS is the URL of your storefront. By default, it’s http://localhost:8000.

It is recommended to set the Storefront CORS as an environment variable:

STORE_CORS=<YOUR_STORE_CORS>

Where <YOUR_STORE_CORS> is the URL of your storefront.

Make sure that the URL is without a backslash at the end. For example, you should use http://localhost:8000 instead of http://localhost:8000/.

Plugins

On your Medusa backend, you can use Plugins to add custom features or integrate third-party services. For example, installing a plugin to use Stripe as a payment provider.

You can learn more about plugins in the Plugins Overview documentation.

Aside from installing the plugin with NPM, you need to pass the plugin you installed into the plugins array defined in medusa-config.js. This array is then exported along with other configurations you’ve added:

module.exports = {
  projectConfig: {
    // previous configurations mentioned...
  },
  plugins,
}

Add a Plugin Without Configuration

To add a plugin that doesn’t need any configurations, you can simply add its name to the plugins array:

const plugins = [
  // other plugins...
  `medusa-my-plugin`,
]

Add a Plugin With Configuration

To add a plugin with configurations, you need to add an object to the plugins array with the plugin’s name and configurations:

const plugins = [
  // other plugins...
  {
    resolve: `medusa-my-plugin`,
    options: {
      apiKey: `test`,
    },
  },
]

It is recommended to use environment variables to store values of options instead of hardcoding them in medusa-config.js.

Configure Medusa Backend

Prerequisites​

Medusa Configurations File​

Environment Variables​

Database Configuration​

SQLite Configurations​

PostgreSQL Configurations​

Changing PostgreSQL Schema​

Changing Database Type​

Common Configuration​

Redis​

JWT Secret​

Cookie Secret​

CORS Configurations​

Accepted Patterns​

Admin CORS​

Storefront CORS​

Plugins​

Add a Plugin Without Configuration​

Add a Plugin With Configuration​

See Also​