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Environment Variables with PHP

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Additional Considerations

5:50 with Alena Holligan

Before we finalize our application, we'll look at some additional options for specifying required variables, giving developers a template to start with, and overriding environment variables.

Specifying Required Environment Variables

Using Dotenv, you can require specific ENV vars to be defined ($_ENV, $_SERVER or getenv()) - throws an exception otherwise. Note: It does not check for existence of a variable in a '.env' file. This is particularly useful to let people know any explicit required variables that your app will not work without.

You can use a single string, or an array of strings:

$dotenv->required(['REPOSITORY', 'SITE_KEY', 'SECRET_KEY', 'SMTP_DEBUG', 'SMTP_HOST', 'SMTP_PORT', 'SMTP_SECURE', 'SMTP_AUTH', 'SMTP_USERNAME', 'SMTP_PASSWORD', 'SMTP_FROM', 'MAILTO_EMAIL', 'MAILTO_NAME']);

If any ENV vars are missing, Dotenv will throw a RuntimeException like this:

One or more environment variables failed assertions: SITE_KEY is missing

Read more from the phpdotenv documentation

Example Files

Only difference for yahoo is SMTP_HOST="smtp.mail.yahoo.com"

env.gmail.txt

#REPOSITORY must be a json string with "type" and "source"
REPOSITORY={ "type":"txt", "source":"inc/quotes.txt" }

#Manage your reCAPTCHA API keys: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin
SITE_KEY=google_recaptcha_site_key
SECRET_KEY=google_recaptcha_secret_key

#Google SMTP
SMTP_DEBUG=2
SMTP_HOST="smtp.gmail.com"
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SECURE="tls"
SMTP_AUTH=true
SMTP_USERNAME=most_likely_your_email
SMTP_PASSWORD=app_password
SMTP_FROM=most_likely_your_email
MAILTO_EMAIL=most_likely_your_email
MAILTO_NAME=any_name

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    Our application is now using environment variables, but 0:00
    what happens if one of those variables is not set? 0:04
    Let's hide the repository. 0:07
    Then go back to the browser. 0:09
    We're getting a notice for 0:14
    non object because our JSON_Decode didn't produce an object. 0:16
    We're still seeing our default value, and 0:20
    on a production server we would have these notices turned off. 0:21
    So maybe that's fine for our quotes, but what about SMTP or the reCaptcha? 0:24
    There are two things to consider here, the application and the other developers. 0:30
    Let's go back to the php dotenv documentation. 0:35
    For the application, php dotenv gives us the option to specify 0:40
    required variables, either as a single string or as an array. 0:44
    There are also a few more options beyond simply requiring a variable, 0:49
    so make sure you check out those options as well. 0:54
    Let's go back to our bootstrap file. 0:57
    We're going to specify the required environment variables. 1:06
    I'll add this to the notes so you can paste them as well. 1:13
    Now let's try our application again. 1:15
    This time we get an exception which tells us exactly which environment variable 1:22
    we're missing. 1:27
    We can now catch this exception and 1:28
    have our application do whatever we want with it. 1:30
    We're not going to get into exceptions at this time but 1:32
    do check the notes for more information on exceptions. 1:35
    So how do we share this requirements with other developers before they trigger 1:38
    an exception? 1:43
    We don't want to share sensitive data and their development environment 1:44
    may be different than ours, php.env suggests using an example file. 1:49
    I've included example files for you as well, 1:53
    I have env.gmail.text, and env.yahoo.text. 1:58
    I added that txt extension, so we can view them more spaces. 2:04
    These files have all the required variables, but 2:08
    I have not set the sensitive data. 2:11
    So these are fine to check into version control. 2:13
    I've also included a comment on the first line to let people know the correct 2:16
    format for the repository variable. 2:21
    Let's finish adding a repository to our dotenv file, and 2:24
    I'll show you one other thing while we're at it. 2:27
    We can close these two files and the bootstrap as well. 2:31
    Nano inc/.env. 2:50
    We'll set the .nb file to use the txt, 3:00
    txt, and change our type to txt. 3:05
    Now we'll uncomment this first line. 3:15
    Our index file now puts the env repository and 3:20
    then calls the bootstrap file which loads our .env file. 3:24
    Let's see what we get in the browser. 3:29
    We're seeing the sqlite data source because by default, environment variables 3:37
    should be immutable, which means that they don't change and we don't override them. 3:42
    This is the default setting for php.env. 3:47
    We can change the settings to override values if that's what we need. 3:51
    Let's go back to our Bootstrap file. 3:54
    Instead of load we use overload. 4:01
    Now let's check the browser again. 4:05
    This time it uses the text source from our .env file, great. 4:08
    Let's change that back to load. 4:12
    But we're going to take out this putenv. 4:19
    One last thing, 4:22
    if we don't want our application to use the .env file in production. 4:23
    But still use the php.env to specify variables. 4:28
    We just need to skip our loading line. 4:32
    Most often this is done by checking for our production variable first. 4:37
    If the environment variable getenv ('APP_ENV') 4:45
    != 'production') 4:55
    Then we can load our .env file. 5:02
    If our appenv environment variable is set, we'll assume that our other variables 5:05
    are being set on a server as well and we don't want to load our dotenv file. 5:10
    We could do the same thing for 5:14
    any other environment whose variables are set on the server. 5:16
    If we're using load instead of overload, 5:19
    php.env will not override any variable set on the server. 5:22
    But it will still give an error if it cannot find the dotenv file to load. 5:26
    Php.env has some additional options such as nesting variables, 5:33
    And also specifying the file name you wish to use. 5:42
    Make sure you take some time to look over the documentation. 5:46

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