Set location of laravel .env

Question

So I just published a build of laravel to my production server. But the .env file was readable when I uploaded it. So I uploaded it to root of my site next to the public_html/ directory.

My question is: How to tell laravel where the .env file is located? It worked when I had it in the public_html/ folder but how do I tell it to look in the root folder?

Answer 1

Set env path in bootstrap/app.php:

$app->useEnvironmentPath($env_path);

for example, directory layout for my project:

 webapp 
 -laravel 
 -public
 -.env

Custom path to env file

$app->useEnvironmentPath(
  dirname(__DIR__, 2)
);

Answer 2

As you can read in the official documentation, the .env file must be in the root directory of your Laravel app. There's no way to change the file location (and I think there's no point too).

Moreover, the root folder SHOULDN'T be a public folder, as .env shouldn't be exposed to a public access, otherwise the main security aim of it would be completely lost.