# Configuration

# App-specific config

Wherever possible, your application should have its own configuration file. A generic settings.php or a name specific to the application i.e. crm.php should be used, rather than adding additional keys to the default Laravel configuration files.

By maintaining a separate configuration file for your application-specific concerns, it becomes much simpler to keep these files up-to-date with the default Laravel configuration files, and subsequently makes upgrading between versions easy.

More information on this approach can be found on Jason McCreary's article on maintaining Laravel config files.

# Naming

Files that live inside your application's config/ directory must use kebab-case.

config/
  my-config-file.php

Within these files, configuration keys must use snake_case.

// config/my-config-file.php
return [
    'my_config_key' => env('CONFIG_KEY'),
];

You must not use the env() helper outside of the configuration files. In production deployments, the configuration is cached (using php artisan config:cache), and any calls to the env() helper outside of your configuration will return null.

Create a corresponding configuration value for the env() variable, and be sure to include it in the application's .env.example file.