Which config file to use

A description of the config file format is available here.

Select which config file to use

Butler uses configuration files in YAML format.

A default config file called production_template.yaml is included in the release Zip files on the download page. It is also available in the GitHub repository.

Make a copy of it, then rename the copy default.yaml, production.yaml, staging.yaml or something else suitable to your specific use case.
Update it as needed (see the config file reference page for details).

Trying to run Butler with the default config file (the one on GitHub) will not work - you must adapt it to your server environment. For example, you need to enter the IP or host name of you Sense server(s), the IP or host name where Butler is running etc.

Finally, Butler must somehow be given instructions about where to look for the config file.
This can be done in several ways depending on how Butler is used, see below.

Config file for stand-alone Butler

Let’s run Butler on a Windows Server using PowerShell, without any options or parameters:

PS C:\tools\butler> .\butler.exe
Usage: butler [options]

Butler gives superpowers to client-managed Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows!
Advanced reload failure alerts, task scheduler, key-value store, file system access and much more.

Options:
  -V, --version                        output the version number
  -c, --configfile <file>              path to config file
  -l, --loglevel <level>               log level (choices: "error", "warn", "info", "verbose", "debug", "silly")
  --new-relic-account-name  <name...>  New Relic account name. Used within Butler to differentiate between different target New Relic accounts
  --new-relic-api-key <key...>         insert API key to use with New Relic
  --new-relic-account-id <id...>       New Relic account ID
  --test-email-address <address>       send test email to this address. Used to verify email settings in the config file.
  --test-email-from-address <address>  send test email from this address. Only relevant when SMTP server allows from address to be set.
  --no-qs-connection                   don't connect to Qlik Sense server at all. Run in isolated mode
  --api-rate-limit                     set the API rate limit, per minute. Default is 100 calls/minute. Set to 0 to disable rate limiting.
  -h, --help                           display help for command
PS C:\tools\butler>

There is an option --configfile (or its short version -c) that let us control which config file to use.
In this example the config file .\config\butler-config.yaml is used.
Let’s try again with the -c option:

PS C:\tools\butler> dir


    Directory: C:\tools\butler


Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        20/06/2022     16:27       68426646 butler.exe
-a----        20/06/2022     17:17          34762 butler-config.yaml


PS C:\tools\butler> .\butler.exe -c .\config\butler-config.yaml
2023-12-10T13:46:32.939Z info: Enabled API endpoints: [
  "apiListEnbledEndpoints",
  "base62ToBase16",
  "base16ToBase62",
  "butlerping",
  "createDir",
  "createDirQVD",
  "fileDelete",
  "fileMove",
  "fileCopy",
  "keyValueStore",
  "mqttPublishMessage",
  "postNewRelicMetric",
  "postNewRelicEvent",
...
...

Butler now starts nicely using the specified config file.

Config file when running Butler as a Node.js app

When running Butler as a Node.js app, i.e. starting it with node butler.js, Butler will look for a config file in the ./config subdirectory.

The name of the config file matters.
Butler looks for an environment variable called “NODE_ENV” and then tries to load a config file named with the value found in NODE_ENV.

Example: NODE_ENV=production

Butler will look for a config file config/production.yaml.

Config file when running Butler in a Docker container

The template docker-compose.yaml file in the GitHub repository shows how to specify which config file that will be used:

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  butler:
    image: ptarmiganlabs/butler:latest
    container_name: butler
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "8080:8080" # REST API available on port 8180 to services outside the container
      - "9998:9998/udp" # UDP port for task failure events
    volumes:
      # Make config file accessible outside of container
      - "./config:/nodeapp/config"
      - "./log:/nodeapp/log"
    environment:
      - "NODE_ENV=production"
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options:
        max-file: "5"
        max-size: "5m"

Here the environment variable NODE_ENV is set to “production”, and the host OS’ ./config directory is mapped to the container’s /nodeapp/config directory.

As there is no --configfile command line option present the default setting will be used, which is to look for the config file in the config directory right under the directory where the docker-compose.yaml file is located.
The file name is determined by Butler (running in the container) looking at the NODE_ENV env variable.

Bottom line is that the ./config/production.yaml (relative to the location of docker-compose.yaml) file will be used.

Running several Butler instances in parallel

If you have several Sense clusters (for example DEV, TEST and PROD environments) you may want to run several Butler instances.

The solution is to create several config files: butler_dev.yaml, butler_test.yaml and butler_prod.yaml.

In this scenario three instances of Butler should be started, each given a different config file via the --configfile command line option.

Note: If running several Butler instances in parallel, you must also ensure that each one uses unique port numbers for their respective REST APIs, UDP servers etc.

Setting environment variables

The method for setting environment variables varies between operating systems:

On Windows: set NODE_ENV=production

Mac OS or Linux: export NODE_ENV=production

If using Docker, the NODE_ENV environment variable is set in the docker-compose.yml file (as already done in the template docker-compose file.)