Nested Variables

[greydnls]

It would be great to have nested variables so I can do something like

$_ENV[‘database’][‘connection_name’][‘username’]

in the .env file it could be something as simple as:

database.connection_name.username = johndoe

and then the package could read that into an array correctly when it loads the file.
Is that a possibility?

[vlucas]

That's not a possibility with this library, because all environment variables are just set as flat strings, and I don't want phpdotenv to differ from the way environment variables are handled on the system. It's a bit obtuse to have no array support and everything as a string (even integers, boolean, etc.), but that's the way ENV works.

That said, phpdotenv is not a total config replacement, so it should only be used for settings that need to be secret, or need to be set/changed on the fly at runtime without code updates.