Laravel - accessing .env variables

Question

I tried to get the environment variable from the .env in my root with

Route::get('/test', function () {
    return "value is". getenv('APP_ENV');
});

and

Route::get('/test', function () {
    return "it is". env('APP_ENV');
});

It is in .env

APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_ENV=local

How can I get access to it?

Answer 1

With Laravel, you should avoid environmental variables outside of your configuration files.

In your config files, you can use environmental variables, example in config/app.php:

'env' => env('APP_ENV', 'production'),

Then you can access this using the config helper: config('app.env').

This allows you to cache your configuration and still access these values, since env('APP_ENV') will no longer work once your config is cached.

Answer 2

Route::get('/test', function () {
    return "it is".config('app.name');
});