.env file wont load variables into config.php - student setting up first php dev environment

Question

Afternoon everyone,

I\'m a student studying Computer Science and I\'m trying to recreate the environment my friend is using to host their PHP based web app. They\'re on a

Answer 1

I'm using WSL and am similarly having problems with my .env not working properly.

Although I'm still looking for a more elegant fix, the hack I'm relying on now is:

1. Copy the contents of your .env to a temporary text file.
2. In that text file, do a regex find-and-replace searching for "\n" and replacing with "\nexport " (with a trailing space).
3. Move the final line's "export " to the first line.
4. Copy the contents of this temporary text file.
5. Paste into your terminal to run these commands.
6. Now you should be able to run your app.

Answer 2

Straightforward Method

You can do this very simply by adding the environment variable to your .bashrc file, assuming that your Windows Environment variables are set correctly and WSL is installed, I'm going to use Java as an example, but any environment variable will work.

Use text editor in WSL or type code .bashrc from WSL home to initialize the WSL VSCode editor. Add the environment variable to the file:

# Shared environment variables
export JAVA_HOME=/mnt/d/Java/jdk11.0.4_10

Just ensure that you change the directory to point to your directory. In my case, it's in D:\Java\jdk11.0.4_10 which in WSL is /mnt/d/Java/jdk11.0.4_10

Also, since you're using Windows binaries, you must specify the file type when running from a WSL bash shell:

Example

Windows:

javac MyClass.java
java MyClass

WSL:

javac.exe MyClass.java
java.exe MyClass

Note that the .exe file extension is being used, since we're calling the Windows binary. If it was a native Linux distribution of the JDK you could simply use java command.

This holds true for any Windows binary that is being run through WSL.