It seems appropriate that backend owns the responsability of knowing any
information/configurations of the LiveKit server. Then, it shares those
with the frontend.
Please see my previous commit to understand why environment variables are
not appropriate for deployment in several remove environments.
As of today, the LiveKit server URL is the only configuration exposed
dynamically to the frontend. Thus, it doesn't justify adding a new route
to the API, responsible for exposing configurations (e.g. /configuration).
As the frontend needs to call the backend when it wants to initiate a new
webconference room, let's pass the server URL when retrieving the room's token.
It is relevant, to get both the room location and the keys to open the room in
the same call.
I prefered to be pragmatic, if the need appears any soon, I would refactor
these parts.
Discussed IRL with @manuhabitela. In developpement, we build locally the
Docker image. Thus, we can pass values to the frontend before the npm build
command was called.
Environment variables are great for configuration, and work perfectly in dev
mode, building Docker image on the fly.
However, in other environment (e.g. staging, pre-prod, prod) we'll pull a common
Docker image published in a remote registry. All cited environments should use
the same Docker image to make tests/deployment reproducible between envs.
As the Docker image is not rebuilt on the fly, we cannot easily configure
customized environment variables for each environment.
The API base URL would have a different value for each environment, and would
require a different environment variable.
Inspired by Impress works, if no environment variable is passed for the API URL,
the window origin will be used, and then the API path will be appended.
Frontend and backend are always deployed on the same URL, usually frontend
is at the '/' route, and backend at the '/api/vXX/' route.
If any configuration are required for each remote environment, they would be
retrieved from the API at runtime.
Voila! Don't hesitate to challenge this commit.
Configured the frontend to use environment variables (prefixed with "VITE_") for API
and LiveKit server URLs, which will be overridden in the Helm chart values
to ensure correct URLs are used in different environments.
