Discussion on: How to read dot files with PHP?

[Matheus Calegaro]

Yes, there is! Some frameworks like Laravel and Symfony have .env file support out of the box.

In your project, you could use vlucas/phpdotenv, which does exactly what you want and it's pretty simple to implement, check it out:

1 - Install it using Composer by typing the following command on your terminal:

composer require vlucas/phpdotenv

2 - Now let's configure it on your application's starting point (I'll assume it is index.php):

<?php
// index.php

include 'vendor/autoload.php';

$dotenv = new Dotenv\Dotenv(__DIR__);
$dotenv->load();

// your code goes here...

3 - Cool, we're almost there! Now create the .env file at your project's root directory and populate it with your configs like this:

DB_USER="user"
DB_PASSWORD="ultraSecurePassword"
DB_NAME="awesome_db"
FOO="bar"

4 - Finally, to retrieve the env values:

<?php
// db.php (naming things is hard)

$user = env('DB_USER');
// OR
$user = getenv('DB_USER');
// OR
$user = $_ENV['DB_USER'];
// OR EVEN
$user = $_SERVER['DB_USER'];

Hope it helps! ;)
(if there's any typo, feel free to correct me, i'll appreciate)

[Ashok Mohanakumar]

Awesome! Everything I was looking for!!! Thanks a bunch