Server Configuration

The library connects to the BigBlueButton integration API, which is protected by a shared secret. Two pieces of information from your server are needed:

• BBB_SERVER_BASE_URL — the base URL of your server’s API, always ending with /bigbluebutton/ (for example https://bbb.example.com/bigbluebutton/).
• BBB_SECRET — the shared secret of the server.

Retrieving URL and secret

Run the following command on your BigBlueButton server:

bbb-conf --secret

It prints both values, for example:

URL: https://bbb.example.com/bigbluebutton/
Secret: 8cd8ef52e8e101574e400365b55e11a6

Providing them to the library

The recommended way are the environment variables BBB_SERVER_BASE_URL and BBB_SECRET (see Getting Started). How to set environment variables depends on your hosting: SetEnv for Apache2 (e.g. in /etc/apache2/envvars), fastcgi_param for nginx, .env for Laravel, etc. Keep the secret out of your source code repository.

Alternatively pass them programmatically:

use BigBlueButton\BigBlueButton;

$bbb = new BigBlueButton('https://bbb.example.com/bigbluebutton/', 'your-secret');

Checksums and hashing algorithms

Every API call is signed with a checksum of methodName + queryString + secret. The library uses SHA-256 by default, which every BigBlueButton 2.3+ server accepts. Older servers accepted SHA-1 only; if you operate one, the algorithm can be configured via the UrlBuilder.

Note

For BBB servers below 3.0 the webhooks endpoints only accept SHA-1 checksums. The library therefore always signs hook calls with SHA-1; see Hooks for the HASH_ALGO_FOR_HOOKS override.