A basic vanilla PHP function to load variables from an .env file.

When you are creating a basic vanilla PHP project and want to keep your database credentials and/or API key out of your GitHub repository you can use a .env file.

1. Create a file called .env and place it in your project folder.

2. Put your actual database credentials and API keys in your `.env``file:

   DB_HOST=<DB_HOST>
   DB_DATABASE=<DB_DATABASE>
   DB_USERNAME=<DB_USERNAME>
   DB_PASSWORD=<DB_PASSWORD>
   
   API_SECRET=real_api_key

3. Create a second copy of your .env file and name it .env.sample. Use this file to provide instructions to the next programmer using your project code:

   DB_HOST=localhost
   DB_DATABASE=database
   DB_USERNAME=username
   DB_PASSWORD=password
   
   API_SECRET=api_key

4. Make sure your GitHub repo does not include the file named .env. In your .gitignore file add:

   .env
   

5. If your .env file is accessible from a browser, use a .htaccess file to hide your .env file:

   <Files .env>
   order allow,deny
   Deny from all
   </Files>

6. In your database connection file, add this function to load the variables from the .env file, and place them in matching constants:

   $env = file(__DIR__.'/.env', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES | FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES);
   
   foreach($env as $value)
   {
     $value = explode('=', $value);
     define($value[0], $value[1]);
   }

7. Finally, you can use the contants in your database connection and any API code:

   $connect = mysqli_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, DB_DATABASE);

• Visual Studio Code
• PHP