How to Set external Parameters in the Service Container

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How to Set external Parameters in the Service Container

In the article Configuring Symfony (and Environments), you learned how to manage your application configuration. At times, it may benefit your application to store certain credentials outside of your project code. Database configuration is one such example. The flexibility of the Symfony service container allows you to easily do this.

Environment Variables

3.2

env() parameters were introduced in Symfony 3.2.

You can reference environment variables by using special parameters named after the variables you want to use enclosed between env(). Their actual values will be resolved at runtime (once per request), so that dumped containers can be reconfigured dynamically even after being compiled.

For example, if you want to use the value of the DATABASE_HOST environment variable in your service container configuration, you can reference it using %env(DATABASE_HOST)% in your configuration files:

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        # app/config/config.yml
doctrine:
    dbal:
        host: '%env(DATABASE_HOST)%'
    

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        <!-- app/config/config.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:doctrine="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/doctrine/doctrine-1.0.xsd">

    <doctrine:config>
        <doctrine:dbal
            host="%env(DATABASE_HOST)%"
        />
    </doctrine:config>

</container>
    

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        // app/config/config.php
$container->loadFromExtension('doctrine', array(
    'dbal' => array(
        'host' => '%env(DATABASE_HOST)%',
    )
));
    

You can also give the env() parameters a default value: the default value will be used whenever the corresponding environment variable is not found:

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        # app/config/parameters.yml
parameters:
    database_host: '%env(DATABASE_HOST)%'
    env(DATABASE_HOST): localhost
    

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        <!-- app/config/parameters.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <parameters>
        <parameter key="database_host">%env(DATABASE_HOST)%</parameter>
        <parameter key="env(DATABASE_HOST)">localhost</parameter>
    </parameters>
 </container>
    

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        // app/config/parameters.php
$container->setParameter('database_host', '%env(DATABASE_HOST)%');
$container->setParameter('env(DATABASE_HOST)', 'localhost');
    

Setting environment variables is generally done at the web server level or in the terminal. If you're using Apache, Nginx or just the console, you can use e.g. one of the following:

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        <VirtualHost *:80>
    # ...

    SetEnv DATABASE_USER user
    SetEnv DATABASE_PASSWORD secret
</VirtualHost>
    

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        fastcgi_param DATABASE_USER user;
fastcgi_param DATABASE_PASSWORD secret;
    

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        $ export DATABASE_USER=user
$ export DATABASE_PASSWORD=secret
    

Tip

You can also define the default value of any existing parameters using special environment variables named after their corresponding parameter prefixed with SYMFONY__ after replacing dots by double underscores (e.g. SYMFONY__KERNEL__CHARSET to set the default value of the kernel.charset parameter). These default values are resolved when compiling the service container and won't change at runtime once dumped.

Constants

The container also has support for setting PHP constants as parameters. See Introduction to Parameters for more details.

Miscellaneous Configuration

The imports directive can be used to pull in parameters stored elsewhere. Importing a PHP file gives you the flexibility to add whatever is needed in the container. The following imports a file named parameters.php.

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        # app/config/config.yml
imports:
    - { resource: parameters.php }
    

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        <!-- app/config/config.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <imports>
        <import resource="parameters.php" />
    </imports>

</container>
    

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        // app/config/config.php
$loader->import('parameters.php');
    

Note

A resource file can be one of many types. PHP, XML, YAML, INI, and closure resources are all supported by the imports directive.

In parameters.php, tell the service container the parameters that you wish to set. This is useful when important configuration is in a non-standard format. The example below includes a Drupal database configuration in the Symfony service container.

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        // app/config/parameters.php
include_once('/path/to/drupal/sites/default/settings.php');
$container->setParameter('drupal.database.url', $db_url);
    

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

How to Set external Parameters in the Service Container

How to Set external Parameters in the Service Container

Environment Variables

Constants

Miscellaneous Configuration

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