Do not throw and exception if .env file is missing

[crisu83]

I think it would be a good idea to change the Dotenv::load method so that it wouldn't throw an exception. The motivation for this is that not all environments use a .env file, for example when we deploy to Amazon we configure the environmental variables through OpsWorks. What this means in practice is that I need an additional check in application to see if the file actually exists before calling Dotenv::load. What do you think?

[tuupola]

You could include empty .env file?

[crisu83]

I could, but it's not an optimal solution because I don't want to create or keep around an empty .env file that I'd include in my build. Adding an empty .env file sounds like a hack.

[vlucas]

This behavior cannot be changed at this point. Too many people rely on this behavior for it to be changed now. Just wrap your call in a try/catch.

[crisu83]

That's no better than checking if the file actually exists. If the project would use proper versioning (semver) you could change this for the next major release without worrying to break BC.

[KIVagant]

Please, add configuration attribute for this behaviour. I totally agree with @crisu83, this exception does not need on production environments. Now, all times, I need to create empty .env file in project root.

[vlucas]

You don't need to deploy an empty .env file - just do a file_exists check before using Dotenv instead.

[crisu83]

@vlucas I think that's unnecessary boilerplate, if the library automatically loads a file it should ensure that the file actually exists before trying to load it.

[vlucas]

@crisu83 It does, which is why it throws an Exception if it does not exist. You can also wrap the Dotenv call in a try/catch block as well.

[crisu83]

Of course you can, but it feels unnecessary to add such logic to your bootstrap file. Here's how dotenv is used by Lumen, Laravel's micro framework https://github.com/laravel/lumen/blob/master/bootstrap/app.php#L5. Maybe that gives you a better idea of what I'm after here.

[GrahamCampbell]

I think this behviour is correct. See how it's commented out. That's what you do if you don't want to load a .env file.

[crisu83]

@GrahamCampbell The behavior is indeed correct in Lumen. However if you decide to use a .env file during development and run something else in production with the current implementation you will need to add unnecessary logic for this in your bootstrap file.

This is not how the other dotenv libraries works. The ruby implementation ignores the error by default (https://github.com/bkeepers/dotenv/blob/master/lib/dotenv.rb#L14), while the node implementation just logs the error by default (https://github.com/motdotla/dotenv/blob/master/lib/main.js#L39), and there is even a option to make it silent.

If you port a module from one programming language to another, I think that the implementation should be as close to the original implementation as possible. That makes it easier to work with the library if you already worked with another dotenv library in another programming language.

@vlucas Can we re-open this issue and implement it in a future version?

[alexweissman]

@vlucas if the try/catch method is the preferred pattern for dealing with alternative environment configurations, it might be worth documenting this in the README.

[crisu83]

@vlucas I still think that we should re-open this issue, just because it works differently in the PHP implementation than in the other implementations.

[GrahamCampbell]

We have changed the exception we throw. You can now catch it. There's no real issue here.