Setting Environment Variables in MAMP?

Question

I assume that MAMP environment variables can be set in ~/.bash_profile, but it seems that setting them there does not always take effect right away. For instance, I just set a variable in my .bash_profile and have tried restarting MAMP servers, restarting MAMP itself, and even logging out of my computer and nothing seems to work. The variable is still not accessible from within my environment. Is there another way to set MAMP env vars that I'm missing or is there a cache that I need to clear?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can also set PHP environment variables in MAMP Pro (not available in MAMP) in the additional parameters for <VirtualHost>: section found in the extended tab of the hosts settings panel.

Screenshot is from MAMP Pro v 3.0.3

Answer 2

MAMP will load the contents of /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/envvars into its environment variables when starting apache. So you can edit the file and add:

MY_VAR="foo"
export MY_VAR

Then access that variable like so:

echo $_ENV["MY_VAR"];

prints:

foo

Update for OSX Yosemite:

rename envvars to _envvars

See: MAMP Pro 3.05 on Mavericks updated to Yosemite - Apache does not start

Answer 3

You can set your environment variables in Apache configuration...

/Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/httpd.conf

SetEnv MY_VAR theValue
SetEnv ANOTHER thisIsTheValue

Answer 4

MAMP is looking for "/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/envvars", if the file doesn't, simply create it and add your environment variables.