Laravel 4 Env Polyfill

Laravel 5 has a nice function env() which can assign a default variable if empty/null/blank.

Laravel 4 applications are generally missing this functionality and if not running on >= PHP 7.0 can't use the ?? notation to keep (isset($_ENV(thing))) ? $_ENV(thing) : default short and sweet e.g $_ENV(thing) ?? default.

Installation

composer require zvps/laravel-4-env-polyfill

Setup

Make sure to start using the detectEnvironment functionality inside boostrap/start.php so .env.local.php for example are available and selected correctly.

$env = $app->detectEnvironment(array(
  'local' => array('your-machine-name'),
));

Next setup .env files and a .env.example.php so required defaults are documented.

.env.local.php



<?php
return array(
  'DATABASE_NAME' => 'my_database',
  'DATABASE_USER' => 'username',
  'DATABASE_PASSWORD' => 'totally_secure_password'
);

Next update all files in app/config/*.php with the env() polyfill:

Without polyfill:

'host'      => if(isset($_ENV['DATABASEHOST']) ? $_ENV['DATABASE_HOST'] : 'localhost',
'database'  => if(isset($_ENV['DATABASE_NAME']) ? $_ENV['DATABASE_NAME'] : 'default_db',
'username'  => if(isset($_ENV['DATABASE_USERNAME']) ? $_ENV['DATABASE_USERNAME'] : 'default_user',
'password'  => if(isset($_ENV['DATABASE_PASSWORD']) ? $_ENV['DATABASE_PASSWORD'] : 'default_pass',

With polyfill:

'host'      => env('DATABASE_HOST', 'localhost')
'database'  => env('DATABASE_NAME', 'default_db'),
'username'  => env('DATABASE_USER', 'default_user'),
'password'  => env('DATABASE_PASSWORD', 'default_pass')