Environment Variables

• Available Environment Variables

Every application needs configuration—database credentials, API keys, SMTP settings, feature flags. But hardcoding these values directly in your code creates serious problems: security vulnerabilities (credentials in version control), inflexibility (can't easily change settings), and deployment headaches (different environments need different values).

UserFrosting uses environment variables to solve these challenges. Environment variables keep sensitive data out of your codebase, allow different configuration for each environment (development, staging, production), and let you change settings without modifying code. It's the twelve-factor app approach that professional applications follow.

For local development, UserFrosting uses .env files to make managing environment variables easy. In production, you set real environment variables directly on your server for maximum security.

Available Environment Variables#

UserFrosting recognizes the following core environment variables:

Variable	Description
UF_MODE	The current environment Modes
CSRF_ENABLED	The global switch for the CSRF Guard. Defaults to true
DB_CONNECTION	The database connection to use
DB_TEST_CONNECTION	The database connection to use in the test environment (defaults to memory)
DB_DRIVER	The database driver to use (choice of mysql, pgsql, sqlite or sqlsrv)
DB_HOST	The database host (e.g., localhost)
DB_PORT	The database port
DB_NAME	The name of the database to use for this install
DB_USER	The database user account
DB_PASSWORD	The database user password
MAIL_MAILER	Set to one of smtp, mail, qmail, sendmail (defaults to smtp)
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS	Outgoing emails are sent from this address
MAIL_FROM_NAME	Outgoing emails are sent with this name
SMTP_HOST	SMTP server host used to send emails
SMTP_USER	SMTP server user used to send emails
SMTP_PASSWORD	SMTP server user password used to send emails
SMTP_PORT	SMTP server port (defaults to 587)
SMTP_AUTH	SMTP server authentication enabled (defaults to true)
SMTP_SECURE	Enable TLS encryption. Set to tls, ssl or false (to disable)

If you don't want to (or can't) configure environment variables directly in your development environment, UserFrosting uses the fantastic phpdotenv library to let you set these variables in a .env file. When running the bake installer, this file will be created for you. To make any modifications, your can run the following Bakery helper command:

$ php bakery setup

You can also edit the .env file manually. Simply copy the sample file in your app/ directory:

$ cp app/.env.example app/.env

Now, you can set values in the .env file and UserFrosting will pick them up as if they were actual environment variables.

You may also want to configure your SMTP server settings as well at this point so that you can use features that require mail, such as password reset and email verification. See Chapter 16 for more information on the mail service.