PHP Dotenv VS Laravel

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.

cd /var/www/ || handle_error "Failed to change directory to /var/www/." sudo git clone https://github.com/laravel/laravel.git laravel || handle_error "Failed to clone Laravel repository."

Laravel is a popular PHP framework known for its expressive syntax and rich ecosystem of features. Here's why it shines for building RESTful APIs:

Implementation In this article, we'll delve into the concept of rate limiting in Laravel; a popular PHP framework. We will explore how to set it up, customize it to suit your application's needs, and handle common scenarios. By the end, you'll have the knowledge and confidence to implement rate limiting in your Laravel applications, enhancing their security and stability.

Delving into PHP frameworks like Laravel or Symfony is like building a skyscraper, with Composer acting as your "construction foreman," guiding you step by step to ensure your code is robust and awe-inspiring. This stage involves getting familiar with popular PHP frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, etc., and utilizing the functionalities provided by these frameworks to rapidly develop efficient, maintainable web applications. Tools to consider: Laravel, Composer.

Your very first starting point should be the Laravel documentation. Known for its clear explanations and user-friendly layout, the Laravel documentation makes setup a breeze, ensuring you get off to the best possible start.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a GraphQL API with Laravel, a popular PHP web framework. We will be creating a simple student model, seeding the database with dummy data, setting up a database connection, and creating a GraphQL server by defining our API's schema, queries, and mutations. We’ll also learn how to make requests to our API (test our endpoints) using a tool like Insomnia or Postman. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a working GraphQL API that you can continue to expand and improve.

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework on GitHub with 75.7k stars and 24.2k forks used for building web applications. It was first released in 2011 and follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. It comes with an expressive and elegant syntax. It is fine-tuned for building professional web applications and ready to handle enterprise workloads. It achieves this by integrating the best packages from the PHP ecosystem and creating a framework that is also developer-friendly. Other than its foundational features, It also provides tools for dependency injection, unit testing, real-time events, and many more.

For this project, we will use Laravel, one of the biggest, most popular and most complete frameworks for PHP, along with Livewire, which will help us make our notifications real-time and reactive. Let's create a project from scratch and implement authentication and notification features for users tagged in posts.