Laravel 5 Environment setup

The .env file is a non-version-controlled file that can contain sensitive information such as settings and passwords. Laravel 5 comes with a .env.example file to get things started.

The way you use environment variables is by declaring them in the .env file, and then invoking them as such:

'key' => env('VALUE', 'default')
'host' => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost')

Additionally, further configuration can be set in files in the config folder. For example, all the database connection information is set up in the config/databases.php file. Everything in that folder is used to that extent, so be sure to have a peek there if you install any useful packages into your app.

Laravel error pages also change what they display based on the environment. For example, the APP_ENV variable in the .env file controls how your app interacts with the browser. If set to APP_ENV = local, there will be much more verbose error pages (useful to a developer), as opposed to APP_ENV = production, which will show only the more user-friendly "Whoops, looks like something went wrong." message! Pretty useful stuff.