From my controllers, I access the application parameters (those in /app/config) with
$this->container->getParameter(\'my_param\')
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In symfony 4, we can access the parameters by means of dependency injection:
Services:
   use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface as Container;
   MyServices {
         protected $container;
         protected $path;
         public function __construct(Container $container)
         {
             $this->container = $container;
             $this->path = $this->container->getParameter('upload_directory');
         }
    }
parameters.yml:
parameters:
     upload_directory: '%kernel.project_dir%/public/uploads'