No Application Encryption Key Has Been Specified

Question

I'm new to Laravel and I'm trying to use the Artisan command...

php artisan serve

It displays...

Laravel development server started: http://127.0.0.1:8000

However, it won't automatically launch and when I manually enter http://127.0.0.1:8000 it shows this error:

RuntimeException No application encryption key has been specified.

Any ideas? I'm using Laravel framework 5.5-dev.

Answer 1

From Encryption - Laravel - The PHP Framework For Web Artisans:

"Before using Laravel's encrypter, you must set a key option in your config/app.php configuration file. You should use the php artisan key:generate command to generate this key"

I found that using this complex internet query in google.com:

"laravel add encrption key" (Yes, it worked even with the typo!)

Answer 2

In my case, I also needed to reset the cached config files:

php artisan key:generate
php artisan config:cache

Answer 3

Open command prompt in the root folder of your project and run below command:

php artisan key:generate

It will generate Application Key for your application.

You can find the generated application key(APP_KEY) in .env file.

Answer 4

Simply run this command:

php artisan key:generate

Answer 5

1. Copy .env.example to .env:

   cp -a .env.example .env

2. Generate a key:

   php artisan key:generate

3. Only then run:

   php artisan serve

Answer 6

I actually had to add a .env file to my project and then copy the contents of .env.example so that the key:generate would work. Not sure why a .env file was not created when I started the project.

Answer 7

cp .env.example .env if there is no .env file present. php artisan key:generate command works for me. It generates the encryption key

Answer 8

php artisan key:generate
php artisan config:cache

worked for me, but it had to be done in a command prompt on Windows.

Doing it inside the terminal in PHPStorm didn't worked.

Answer 9

A common issue you might experience when working on a Laravel application is the exception:

RuntimeException No application encryption key has been specified.

You'll often run into this when you pull down an existing Laravel application, where you copy the .env.example file to .env but don't set a value for the APP_KEY variable.

At the command line, issue the following Artisan command to generate a key:

php artisan key:generate

This will generate a random key for APP_KEY, After completion of .env edit please enter this command in your terminal for clear cache:php artisan config:cache

Also, If you are using the PHP's default web server (eg. php artisan serve) you need to restart the server changing your .env file values. now you will not get to see this error message.

Answer 10

Follow this steps:

1. php artisan key:generate
2. php artisan config:cache
3. php artisan serve

Answer 11

Okay, I'll write another instruction, because didn't find the clear answer here. So if you faced such problems, follow this:

1. Rename or copy/rename .env.example file in the root of your project to .env.

You should not just create empty .env file, but fill it with content of .env.example.

2. In the terminal go to the project root directory(not public folder) and run

php artisan key:generate

3. If everything is okay, the response in the terminal should look like this

Application key [base64:wbvPP9pBOwifnwu84BeKAVzmwM4TLvcVFowLcPAi6nA=] set successfully.

4. Now just copy key itself and paste it in your .env file as the value to APP_KEY. Result line should look like this:

APP_KEY=base64:wbvPP9pBOwifnwu84BeKAVzmwM4TLvcVFowLcPAi6nA=

5. In terminal run

php artisan config:cache

That's it.

Answer 12

You can generate Application Encryption Key using this command:

php artisan key:generate

Then, create a cache file for faster configuration loading using this command:

php artisan config:cache

Or, serve the application on the PHP development server using this command:

php artisan serve

That's it!

Answer 13

If you git clone some project then this kind of issue may usually occur.

1. make sure there is .env file
2. run php artisan key:generate and then it should generate appkey in .env
3. finally run php artisan serve and it should be working.

Answer 14

I ran into this issue when I manually copied the contents of my Laravel project (say sites/oldname) into a new directory on my Mac (say, sites/newname). Since I was manually dragging and droppping, it didn't grab the hidden files, namely, '.env'. When I looked more closely at sites/oldname I saw .editorconfig, .env, .env.example, .gitatrributes, .styleci.yml, etc.

The error went away once I copied the hidden files to the new directory.

So, "No Application Encryption Key Has Been Specified" is Laravel speak for "your .env file is missing."