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Introduction

Laravel Forge makes it easy to manage environment variables for your sites. If your project contains a .env file, you can easily create and edit environment variables from the “Environment” tab of your site’s settings.
If Laravel Forge detects a .env.example file in your project, it will automatically copy this and replace some of the settings to match your server’s database settings during site creation.An empty .env.example file could result in an empty environment file on the first deployment of your site.

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Modifying environment variables

To modify your site’s environment variables, navigate to your site’s “Settings” panel and click on the “Environment” sidebar item. When you modify environment variables through Forge, the changes are written directly to the .env file within your application. If you’re using zero-downtime deployments, this file will be symlinked into the current release directory, ensuring your environment configuration is consistent across deployments. After modifying your environment variables, you can optionally choose to automatically run:
  • php artisan config:cache - Caches your configuration files for improved performance.
  • php artisan queue:restart - Gracefully restarts your queue workers to pick up the new environment values.
These options help ensure your application immediately reflects the updated environment configuration without requiring manual intervention.

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Encrypted environment files

Laravel Forge provides support for Laravel’s encrypted environment files without requiring you to include your encryption key within your deployment script. To leverage this feature, add your encryption key to the “Encrypted environment files” section of your site’s “Environment” tab. Once added, Laravel Forge will inject the value into the LARAVEL_ENV_ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable during deployments, allowing you to add the env:decrypt Artisan command to your deployment script without needing to specify the --key option manually. 
php artisan env:decrypt --force

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Laravel integrations

The following Laravel-specific features are only available to sites using the Laravel or Statamic project type:
  • php artisan config:cache - Automatically cache configuration files after updating environment variables.
  • php artisan queue:restart - Automatically restart queue workers after updating environment variables.
  • Encrypted environment files - Support for Laravel’s encrypted environment files feature.
If your site is using a different project type, these features will not be available.
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