Environment Variables

When you are running Bark inside a Docker container or deploying through an orchestration platform, environment variables are often the most convenient way to pass configuration in. ASP.NET Core's built-in configuration system picks them up automatically, so no code changes or extra config files are needed on your end.

Every setting you would normally write in appsettings.json can be provided this way. For the full list of available keys, see Site Config.

How the mapping works ​

ASP.NET Core translates environment variable names into configuration keys by replacing double underscores (__) with the colon (:) used to separate nested sections. This keeps the naming consistent with what you would write directly in appsettings.json.

For example, Docs:RootPath becomes Docs__RootPath, and Docs:Themes:PrimaryColor becomes Docs__Themes__PrimaryColor.

Public base URL ​

Set PublicBaseUrl to the origin your site is actually served from:

PublicBaseUrl=https://docs.example.com

Bark uses it to build the absolute URLs in robots.txt, llms.txt, the RSS feed, and the canonical and og:url tags. Left unset, those URLs are built from the incoming request's Host header, which the caller controls. That is fine locally, but on a public host anyone can request your robots.txt with a forged Host and get a Sitemap: line pointing somewhere else. If a CDN caches that response, the forged copy is what your visitors and crawlers get.

Combine it with the standard AllowedHosts variable so requests for other hostnames are rejected outright rather than merely ignored:

AllowedHosts=docs.example.com

Docs__PublicBaseUrl works too, if you prefer keeping it alongside the other Docs__ settings. Exporting a static site with --base-url sets the same value, so you only need this when running Bark as a server.

Server URL and port ​

Kestrel's listening address is controlled by the standard ASPNETCORE_URLS variable:

ASPNETCORE_URLS=http://+:8080

You can specify multiple addresses separated by a semicolon if your deployment needs to listen on more than one port:

ASPNETCORE_URLS=http://+:8080;https://+:8443

Examples ​

Docker is a common deployment target, so the examples below show both a docker run one-liner and a Compose file. The same variables work in any environment that supports standard process environment variables.

docker run:

docker run \
  -e Docs__RootPath=/docs \
  -e Docs__BasePath=/my-repo \
  -e PublicBaseUrl=https://docs.example.com \
  -e AllowedHosts=docs.example.com \
  -e ASPNETCORE_URLS=http://+:8080 \
  -v /path/to/your/docs:/docs \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  your-bark-image

docker-compose.yml:

services:
  docs:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      ASPNETCORE_URLS: http://+:8080
      Docs__RootPath: /docs
      Docs__BasePath: /my-repo
      PublicBaseUrl: https://docs.example.com
      Docs__EnableHotReload: "false"
      AllowedHosts: docs.example.com
    volumes:
      - ./docs:/docs