PHP Dotenv VS Expose

After successfully setting up our project, you'll observe that certain packages come pre-installed. One of these packages is vlucas/phpdotenv. This package serves the purpose of facilitating the loading of .env variables within your projects. These variables, stored in a file named '.env', allow for the configuration of various settings without hardcoding them directly into your code. Instead, you can define environment-specific variables such as database credentials, API keys, or any other sensitive information in the .env file, providing a more flexible and secure approach to configuration management.

Recently, I jumped to reading on the documentation of the function putenv() and define() and the array $_ENV to understand the different between all. Also, I looked at the library phpdotenv and how it handles environment variables since its the standard approach to go with when dealing with environment variables in PHP.

So to get down to it, what are some of the best practices here? First off, things that you would normally do, like utilize some sort of secrets manager, that won't be available to you. You also can't utilize environment variables with apache. So you're going to have to have some sort of local secret (password/passphrase) to perform the encryption/decryption. With that said, mysql does provide AES encryption with their AES_ENCRYPT/AES_DECRYPT calls, so in that manner, yes you can safely store PII or other values in a shared MySQL. You can use a php library like https://github.com/vlucas/phpdotenv The decryption password(s) should be in the .ENV file Nothing prevents you from utilizing some scheme perhaps to provide multiple passwords if you want to, perhaps a separate one for each individual column you plan to encrypt.

DotEnv - a popular library that allows us to use environment variables in our project.

[PHP dotenv.](https://github.com/vlucas/phpdotenv) Loads environment variables from `.env` to `getenv(), $_ENV` and `$_SERVER`

PHP dotenv. Loads environment variables from .env to getenv(), $_ENV and $_SERVER automagically.

Use this library https://github.com/vlucas/phpdotenv. Hopefully you are using composer. If not, please consider using it.

First, we need to have PHP installed as well as Composer (A dependency manager for PHP). Using Composer, we need to install dotenv which will allow us to read .env files.

Here, I'm using the vlucas/phpdotenv library to process .env files.

Expose is another good one.

So in the end, for those interested with the same issue (How to forward ports behind the Starlink CGNAT), all the VPN providers I tried were bad (the IP they allow to open weren't working well, or they only provide dynamic IPs), so in the end I : 1/ bought a small router on Amazon, the GL-MT1300 (by GL-iNet) but their smaller routers should work too: https://www.amazon.fr/GL-iNet-GL-MT1300-Wireless-Pocket-Sized-Repeater/dp/B08MKZXGBY?ref\_=ast\_sto\_dp 2/ installed AstroRelay on it (followed this tutorial : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3RkMeO4kDg ): https://astrorelay.com And that's it, all my local services work like a charm and are accessible outside. I didn't have to roll up my sleeve to setup a VPS or to setup reverse SSH tunnel. As an alternative to AstroRelay I could have used these services but they seemed a bit more complex to install or use: - https://ngrok.com/ - https://expose.dev/ - https://localxpose.io/ - https://tunnelto.dev/ - https://www.zerotier.com/

If you still want to use the SPN for the connection, a service like this can be a work around: https://expose.dev/

In order to achieve that, there are multiple tools that can help you with that such as ngrok or expose

I use Expose and it works awesome for me

An alternative to ngrok, written in PHP, open source: https://expose.dev/

There are plenty of tunneling solutions that can be used for local development, such as: Ngrok, Localtunnel, and Expose.

A great solution is https://expose.dev it’s like ngrock but for php apps. Basically instal. The app and run on simple command on app folder and your app will be accessible via web