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How to Set external Parameters in the Service Container

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How to Set external Parameters in the Service Container

In 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

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, when installing the doctrine recipe, database configuration is put in a DATABASE_URL environment variable:

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# .env
DATABASE_URL="mysql://db_user:db_password@127.0.0.1:3306/db_name"

This variable is referenced in the service container configuration using %env(DATABASE_URL)%:

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    # config/packages/doctrine.yaml
doctrine:
    dbal:
        url: '%env(DATABASE_URL)%'
    # ...
  • XML
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    <!-- config/packages/doctrine.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
            url="%env(DATABASE_URL)%"
        />
    </doctrine:config>

</container>
  • PHP
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    // config/packages/doctrine.php
$container->loadFromExtension('doctrine', array(
    'dbal' => array(
        'url' => '%env(DATABASE_URL)%',
    )
));

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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    # config/services.yaml
parameters:
    env(DATABASE_HOST): localhost
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    <!-- config/services.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="env(DATABASE_HOST)">localhost</parameter>
    </parameters>
 </container>
  • PHP
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    // config/services.php
$container->setParameter('env(DATABASE_HOST)', 'localhost');

Configuring Environment Variables in Production

During development, you'll use the .env file to configure your environment variables. On your production server, it is recommended to configure these at the web server level. If you're using Apache or Nginx, you can use e.g. one of the following:

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    <VirtualHost *:80>
    # ...

    SetEnv DATABASE_URL "mysql://db_user:db_password@127.0.0.1:3306/db_name"
</VirtualHost>
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    fastcgi_param DATABASE_URL "mysql://db_user:db_password@127.0.0.1:3306/db_name";

Caution

Beware that dumping the contents of the $_SERVER and $_ENV variables or outputting the phpinfo() contents will display the values of the environment variables, exposing sensitive information such as the database credentials.

Constants

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

Miscellaneous Configuration

You can mix whatever configuration format you like (YAML, XML and PHP) in config/packages/. Importing a PHP file gives you the flexibility to add whatever is needed in the container. For instance, you can create a drupal.php file in which you set a database URL based on Drupal's database configuration:

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// config/packages/drupal.php

// import Drupal's configuration
include_once('/path/to/drupal/sites/default/settings.php');

// set a app.database_url parameter
$container->setParameter('app.database_url', $db_url);

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