Connections between blocks

Connections are the mechanism that links your blocks together on the canvas. When you draw a link between two blocks, Fransys automatically injects the environment variables needed for communication between services.

How it works

1. Drag a database or service block onto the canvas
2. Draw a link between your application block and the service
3. Done — Fransys generates and injects all variables automatically

No copy-pasting credentials, no .env file to maintain manually, no risk of inconsistency between services.

Automatically injected variables

Application → Database (PostgreSQL, MariaDB)

Variable	Description
DB_HOST	Internal address of the database service
DB_PORT	Service port
DB_DATABASE	Database name
DB_USERNAME	Connection username
DB_PASSWORD	Password (automatically generated)

Application → Redis

Variable	Description
REDIS_HOST	Internal address of the Redis service
REDIS_PORT	Service port
REDIS_PASSWORD	Password (automatically generated)

Application → Soketi

When you connect a Soketi block, Fransys injects the variables and lets you rename them to match your framework's convention. Each variable displays its original name and the new name on the application side:

Original variable	Renamed to	Description
SOCKET_HOST	PUSHER_HOST	WebSocket server address
SOKETI_DEFAULT_APP_ID	PUSHER_APP_ID	Application identifier
SOKETI_DEFAULT_APP_KEY	PUSHER_APP_KEY	Public key
SOKETI_DEFAULT_APP_SECRET	PUSHER_APP_SECRET	Secret key

This automatic renaming allows your Laravel application to directly use standard Pusher variables without any code adaptation.

Custom variables

In addition to automatically injected variables, you can add your own environment variables in the Environment variables tab of each block:

• Click + Add a variable to add a variable
• Define the Name and Value
• Click Export variables to export all variables in .env format

Passwords are hidden by default (displayed as ••••••••••) for security reasons.

Environment variable expansion

Fransys supports variable expansion: you can reference a variable inside another using the ${VARIABLE_NAME} syntax.

The most common example: database connection URLs. Rather than duplicating host, port, user, password, and database name values in a long connection string, you define each value once and compose your URL from these variables:

DATABASE_URL = postgres://${DB_USER}:${DB_PASSWORD}@${DB_HOST}:${DB_PORT}/${DB_NAME}

If the password changes, you modify it in one single place. No more copy-paste errors between variables and inconsistencies across environments.

Other expansion examples

# Full URL of an internal API
API_BASE_URL = https://${API_HOST}:${API_PORT}/api/v1

# Composed Redis URL
REDIS_URL = redis://:${REDIS_PASSWORD}@${REDIS_HOST}:${REDIS_PORT}/0

# Soketi configuration
BROADCAST_URL = ws://${SOKETI_HOST}:6001/app/${PUSHER_APP_KEY}

tip

Variable expansion greatly simplifies managing your configurations. Define each value once, and compose complex variables from these elementary building blocks.

Best practices

• Connect your blocks on the canvas rather than manually entering variables — you benefit from automatic injection and synchronization.
• Use variable expansion for complex connection URLs — a single point of modification in case of change.
• Export your variables regularly to keep a record of your configuration.