How to set .env values in laravel programmatically on the fly

Question

I have a custom CMS that I am writing from scratch in Laravel and want to set env values i.e. database details, mailer details, general configuration, etc from

Answer 1

In the event that you want these settings to be persisted to the environment file so they be loaded again later (even if the configuration is cached), you can use a function like this. I'll put the security caveat in there, that calls to a method like this should be gaurded tightly and user input should be sanitized properly.

private function setEnvironmentValue($environmentName, $configKey, $newValue) {
    file_put_contents(App::environmentFilePath(), str_replace(
        $environmentName . '=' . Config::get($configKey),
        $environmentName . '=' . $newValue,
        file_get_contents(App::environmentFilePath())
    ));

    Config::set($configKey, $newValue);

    // Reload the cached config       
    if (file_exists(App::getCachedConfigPath())) {
        Artisan::call("config:cache");
    }
}

An example of it's use would be;

$this->setEnvironmentValue('APP_LOG_LEVEL', 'app.log_level', 'debug');

$environmentName is the key in the environment file (example.. APP_LOG_LEVEL)

$configKey is the key used to access the configuration at runtime (example.. app.log_level (tinker config('app.log_level')).

$newValue is of course the new value you wish to persist.