I'm developing a Laravel application that needs to have distinct configurations for different environments, including development, staging, and production. These configurations involve various settings such as database connections, cache drivers, and API keys. I want to ensure that sensitive data, like API keys, are securely managed for each environment.
I've read through the Laravel documentation and explored the .env file and the config folder for configuration management. However, I'm uncertain about the best approach to structure and switch between configurations effectively. I expected to find clear guidance and possibly some code examples or references to libraries that can assist with managing environment-specific settings.
According to Laravel documentation:
Before loading your application's environment variables, Laravel determines if either the APP_ENV environment variable has been externally provided or if the --env CLI argument has been specified. If so, Laravel will attempt to load an .env.[APP_ENV] file if it exists. If it does not exist, the default .env file will be loaded.
it seems you can define multiple .env files for different environments, I think you can try creating .env file for local as .env.local , and for development as .env.development and so on.