Laravel 5 configuration - environments and overriding

Question

I installed fresh Laravel 5 copy.

My detectEnvironment function is defined this way:

$app->detectEnvironment(function()
{
    return 'local';
    return getenv('APP_ENV') ?: 'production';
});

In config\local I've created database.php file:

<?php

return [
    'nothing' => 'new',
];

I run php artisan clear-compiled.

My index method of WelcomeController is defined this way:

public function index(Application $app)
{
    echo $app->environment();
    var_dump($app['config']['database']);
    //echo $app['config']['database'];
    return view('welcome');
}

Application was imported this way: use Illuminate\Foundation\Application;

The result I get is:

local array(1) { ["nothing"]=> string(3) "new" } 

whereas I would expect Laravel to cascade config file with production one (with the default config\database.php file.

The strange thing is that even if I comment the line return 'local'; run again php artisan clear-compiled it shows:

production array(1) { ["nothing"]=> string(3) "new" } 

so it seems it always loads database.php file content (this one from local folder) and overrides main database.php file. It works fine again when I change this file name to for example aaa.php.

Is it a bug or maybe environment configuration shouldn't be stored inside config directory? But if not, where should they be store? I don't know if it's a bug or a feature so if anyone knows more about it, please give me a clue.

Answer 1

Although in documentation for Laravel dev (5.0) there is info that configuration will cascade it's not true. I have tested it about 2 weeks ago and it seems at the moment the only way to have different values for environments is using ENV file where you put custom values for current environment. Putting settings in directories won't work as it used to work however it's possible it will change or maybe has been already changed for last 2 weeks.

Answer 2

There's a package that brings the cascading config system back to Laravel 5.

Disclaimer: I am the author.

Answer 3

For me it looks like defect in Laravel 5 dev branch. I was able to work around by adding manual environment detection and configuration. This code does it.

'default' => $app->environment()=='testing'?'sqlite':'mysql',

Answer 4

It is easy to configure Laravel 5 environment.

1. Open your root application folder and find ".env.example",
2. Copy and rename into ".env",
3. Please fit ".env" file into your environment,
4. If you use GIT, make sure you don't push this file to your GIT repository. For 'complete explanation', I write this configuration here.

Edited;

I quote from the developer in His github repository readme.md file;

phpdotenv is made for development environments, and generally should not be used in production. In production, the actual environment variables should be set so that there is no overhead of loading the .env file on each request. This can be achieved via an automated deployment process with tools like Vagrant, chef, or Puppet, or can be set manually with cloud hosts like Pagodabox and Heroku.

So, you need to create ".env" file per machine and don't use ".env" file in your production server.