The core settings of your Laravel application – database connection, queue and mail settings, etc. – live in files in the config folder. Each of these files returns an array, and each value in the array will be accessible by a config key that is comprised of the file-name and all descendant keys, separated by dots ( .)
So, if you create a file at config/services.php that looks like this:
return [
'keys' =>
[
'secret' => '123456'
]
];
you will now have access to that config variable using
Any configuration variables that should be distinct for each environment (and therefore not committed to source control) will instead live in your .env files.
Let’s say you want to use a different Bugsnag API key for each environment. You’d set the config file to pull it from .env:
// config/services.php
return [
'bugsnag' => [
'api_key' => env('BUGSNAG_API_KEY')
];
]
This env( ) helper function pulls a value from your .env file with that same key. So now, add that key to your .env (settings for this environment) and .env.example (template for all environments) files:
Your .env file already contains quite a few environment-specific variables needed by the framework, like which mail driver you’ll be using and what your basic database settings are
