Laravel environment variables leaking between applications when they call each other through GuzzleHttp

Question

I have two Laravel 5.2 applications (lets call them A and B) on my local machine, both configured on two different virtualhosts on my local Apache 2.4 development server.

Answer 1

I'm facing the same exact issue with (XAMPP) Apache vHosts on Windows.

Dirty hack; caching your configurations...

php artisan config:cache

Source: #219

Note: You will need to clear the configuration cache before running phpunit tests.

php artisan config:clear

./vendor/bin/phpunit

php artisan config:cache

Answer 2

The problem is that you are using a shared instance of PHP, so when one of the apps sets an environment variable that is shared with the other app. I believe phpdotenv treats them as immutable, so once they are set, the other application cannot override them.

mod_php (which i presume you are using since you mentioned apache) basically provides a php interpreter inside each apache process. An apache process will be shared between all your vhosts hence why you are having this issue. You would also get the same issue if you were running nginx and php-fpm, however its easier to solve if you were running the latter software stack.

Unfortunately one port can only be bound to one process. So the only way to stick with mod_php and apache is too place your vhosts on seperate port numbers, which means you'll have to place the port number of at least one of them in the url when accessing it. I don't really use apache anymore so i can't give you specific details on doing this, it might be a case of just setting different ports in your vhost config and apache will just do it, but i'll have to defer you too google.

If you were running nginx/php-fpm it would probably just be a case of creating a second php-fpm process config running on a different port or socket and pointing the second vhost at that php instance and away you go.

So in summary you have a few solutions:

1. Stay with apache and mod_php, and spend the rest of the week googling how to do what i said.
2. Look into running php as a cgi module on apache will will then give you the flexibility you need (this is akin to using nginx/php-fpm but without changing your webserver software).
3. Stop using phpdotenv and find an alternative approach (such as loading your config in htaccess or inside the vhost so its available as $_ENV or $_SERVER keys)
4. Install a dev stack that includes nginx/php-fpm and it should be easily solvable by creating two php processes
5. Use virtual machines (possibly look at vagrant or docker) .

Sorry i don't have better news, but unfortunately your WAMP stack is just a little too restrictive out of the box.