Configuration

Introduction

All of the configuration files for the Platine framework are stored in the config directory. Each option is documented, so feel free to look through the files and get familiar with the options available to you.

These configuration files allow you to configure things like your database connection information, your template, as well as various other core configuration values such as your application time zone and application URL.

Environment Configuration

It is often helpful to have different configuration values based on the environment where the application is running. For example, you may wish to use a different logger level locally than you do on your production server.

To make this a cinch, in a fresh Platine installation, the root directory of your application will contain a .env.example file that defines many common environment variables. After the Platine installation process, this file can be copied to .env.

Platine's default .env file contains some common configuration values that may differ based on whether your application is running locally or on a production web server. These values are then retrieved from various Platine configuration files within the config directory using Platine's env helper function.

If you are developing with a team, you may wish to continue including a .env.example file with your application. By putting placeholder values in the example configuration file, other developers on your team can clearly see which environment variables are needed to run your application.

Note

Any variable in your .env file can be overridden by external environment variables such as server-level or system-level environment variables.

Environment File Security

All variables in your .env files are typically parsed as strings, so some reserved values have been created to allow you to return a wider range of types from the env() helper function:

.env Value	env() Value
true	(bool) true
TRUE	(bool) true
false	(bool) false
FALSE	(bool) false
empty	(string) ''
null	(null) null
NULL	(null) null

If you need to define an environment variable with a value that contains spaces, you may do so by enclosing the value in double quotes:

PL_APP_NAME="My Application"

If you want to convert some value inside .env to some basic type you can specify in the 3rd argument of env or Platine\Framework\Env\Env::get method like below:

<?php
    $bool = env('MY_BOOLEAN', false, 'bool');
	$int = env('MY_INTEGER', 0, 'int');
	$float = env('MY_FLOAT', 0.0, 'float');
	$email = env('MY_EMAIL', '', 'email');
	$ip = env('MY_IP_ADDR', '0.0.0.0', 'ip');
	$url = env('MY_URL', 'http://localhost', 'url');
	
	// same for Platine\Framework\Env\Env::get method

Retrieving Environment Configuration

All of the variables listed in this file will be loaded into the $_ENV PHP super-global when your application receives a request. However, you may use the env helper or Platine\Framework\Env\Env::get to retrieve values from these variables in your configuration files. In fact, if you review the Platine configuration files, you will notice many of the options are already using this helper:

<?php
    return [
    	// ...
		'debug' => env('PL_APP_DEBUG', true),
    	// ...
    ];

The second value passed to the env function is the "default value". This value will be returned if no environment variable exists for the given key.

Determining The Current Environment

The current application environment is determined via the PL_APP_ENV variable from your .env file. You may access this value via the getEnvironment method on the Platine\Framework\App\Application:

<?php
    use Platine\Framework\App\Application;

	$app = '...'; // get instance from container or other way
    $environment = $app->getEnvironment();

Accessing Configuration Values

You may easily access your configuration values using the Platine\Config\Config from anywhere in your application. The configuration values may be accessed using "dot" syntax, which includes the name of the file and option you wish to access. A default value may also be specified and will be returned if the configuration option does not exist:

<?php
    use Platine\Config\Config;

	$config = '...'; // get instance from container or other way
    $value = $config->get('file.config.key');
	
	// Retrieve a default value if the configuration value does not exist
	$value = $config->get('file.config.key.not.found', 'default value');

	// To set configuration values at runtime
	$config->set('file.config.key', 'value of config');

Debug Mode

The debug option in your config/app.php configuration file determines how much information about an error is actually displayed to the user. By default, this option is set to respect the value of the PL_APP_DEBUG environment variable, which is stored in your .env file.

For local development, you should set the PL_APP_DEBUG environment variable to true. In your production environment, this value should always be false. If the variable is set to true in production, you risk exposing sensitive configuration values to your application's end users.

Note

Platine\Config\Config implements ArrayAccess so you can easily access or set the configuration values using array direct access.

See example below:

<?php
// get the value
$value = $config['file.config.key'];

// set the value
$config['file.config.key'] = 'value';