How to get system environment variables into PHP while running CLI & Apache2Handler?

Question

My system is Ubuntu and I have set my environment variables in /etc/environment.

If I'm running PHP script using CLI - environment variables from /etc/environment are recognized.

But, if I go to execute PHP script thru http://domain/test.php (that is apache2handler) exactly the same script prints out NULL, meaning environment variables from /etc/environment are not loaded.

The fix I did was adding variables in /etc/apache2/envvars and that solved the problem.

But that is two different files, which then have to be kept in sync.

How can I make PHP / Apache load and recognize environment variables from /etc/environment (system)?

EDIT: To clarify things, when I say 'not loaded into PHP' it means variables from /etc/environment are not set in $_SERVER, $_ENV, getenv() and do not exists in $GLOBALS. In other words 'are not loaded into PHP'.

Answer 1

I had exactly the same problem. To solve it, I just sourced /etc/environment inside /etc/apache2/envvars.

The content of /etc/environment:

export MY_PROJECT_PATH=/var/www/my-project export MY_PROJECT_ENV=production export [email protected] 

The content of /etc/apache2/envvars:

# Load all the system environment variables. . /etc/environment 

Now, I'm able to use these variables in the Apache Virtual Host config files and in PHP.

Here's an example of an Apache virtual host:

<VirtualHost *:80>   ServerName my-project.com   ServerAlias www.my-project.com   ServerAdmin ${MY_PROJECT_MAIL}   UseCanonicalName On    DocumentRoot ${MY_PROJECT_PATH}/www    # Error log.   ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/my-project.com_error.log   LogLevel warn    # Access log.   <IfModule log_config_module>     LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%m %>U%q\" %>s %b %D" clean_url_log_format     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/my-project.com_access.log clean_url_log_format   </IfModule>    # DocumentRoot directory   <Directory ${MY_PROJECT_PATH}/www>     # Disable .htaccess rules completely, for better performance.     AllowOverride None     Options FollowSymLinks Includes     Order deny,allow     Allow from All      Include ${MY_PROJECT_PATH}/config/apache/inc.mime-types.conf     Include ${MY_PROJECT_PATH}/config/apache/inc.cache-control.conf      # Rewrite rules.     <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>       RewriteEngine on       RewriteBase /        # Include all the common rewrite rules (for http and https).       Include ${MY_PROJECT_PATH}/config/apache/inc.rewriterules-shared.conf     </IfModule>   </Directory> </VirtualHost> 

And this is an example of how to access them with PHP:

<?php header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8'); print getenv('MY_PROJECT_PATH') . "\n" .       getenv('MY_PROJECT_ENV') . "\n" .       getenv('MY_PROJECT_MAIL') . "\n"; ?> 

Answer 2

On ubuntu, PHP uses different ini files for regular and CLI processes.

There should be few ini files like /etc/php5/cli/php.ini, /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini or /etc/php5/php.ini. Open related INI file and change the

variables_order = "GPCS"

line to

variables_order = "EGPCS".

After that, you would get the environment variables which you set before using $_ENV['varname'].

From php.ini about variables_order :

Abbreviations for the following respective super globals: GET, POST, COOKIE, ENV and SERVER. There is a performance penalty paid for the registration of these arrays and because ENV is not as commonly used as the others, ENV is is not recommended on productions servers. You can still get access to the environment variables through getenv() should you need to. 

So you can try to use getenv() instead of $_ENV[].