Installation¶

You can install the component in 2 different ways:

• Install it via Composer (symfony/dotenv on Packagist);
• Use the official Git repository (https://github.com/symfony/dotenv).

Then, require the vendor/autoload.php file to enable the autoloading mechanism provided by Composer. Otherwise, your application won’t be able to find the classes of this Symfony component.

Usage¶

Sensitive information and environment-dependent settings should be defined as environment variables (as recommended for twelve-factor applications). Using a .env file to store those environment variables eases development and CI management by keeping them in one “standard” place and agnostic of the technology stack you are using (Nginx vs PHP built-in server for instance).

Load a .env file in your PHP application via Dotenv::load():

use Symfony\Component\Dotenv\Dotenv;

$dotenv = new Dotenv();
$dotenv->load(__DIR__.'/.env');

// You can also load several files
$dotenv->load(__DIR__.'/.env', __DIR__.'/.env.dev');

Given the following .env file content:

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# .env
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=pass

Access the value with getenv() in your code:

$dbUser = getenv('DB_USER');
// you can also use ``$_ENV`` or ``$_SERVER``

You should never store a .env file in your code repository as it might contain sensitive information; create a .env.dist file with sensible defaults instead.

Symfony Dotenv should only be used in development/testing/staging environments. For production environments, use “real” environment variables.

As a .env file is a regular shell script, you can source it in your own shell scripts:

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source .env

Add comments by prefixing them with #:

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# Database credentials
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=pass # This is the secret password

Use environment variables in values by prefixing variables with $:

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DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=${DB_USER}pass # Include the user as a password prefix

Embed commands via $() (not supported on Windows):

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START_TIME=$(date)