What's the best way to add many environment variables to an App Platform service?

Posted on November 30, 2020

We’re attempting to build a Laravel app on the App Platform, and for those unaware, the default .env file for a Laravel project is pretty long (ours is about twice this size):

APP_NAME=Laravel
APP_ENV=local
APP_KEY=
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=http://localhost

LOG_CHANNEL=stack

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

BROADCAST_DRIVER=log
CACHE_DRIVER=file
QUEUE_CONNECTION=sync
SESSION_DRIVER=file
SESSION_LIFETIME=120

REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PASSWORD=null
REDIS_PORT=6379

MAIL_DRIVER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_BUCKET=

PUSHER_APP_ID=
PUSHER_APP_KEY=
PUSHER_APP_SECRET=
PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER=mt1

MIX_PUSHER_APP_KEY="${PUSHER_APP_KEY}"
MIX_PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER="${PUSHER_APP_CLUSTER}"

Obviously copy/pasting them all into the web UI isn’t ideal, and neither is committing the .env file to version control.

What’s the best way of getting these environment variables into the app?

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VoordeMensen

November 30, 2020

My strategy has been to locally save the yaml file:

https://cloud.digitalocean.com/apps/download-spec/your-app-name.yaml

Then edit and don’t submit to version control but use doctl to update my app https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#update-an-app

# init with API keys, see docs
doctl auth init

# list your apps
doctl apps list #list all 

# then update app with edited YAML
doctl apps update <app-id> --spec <path-to-yaml>

More on doctl and app platform: https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/app-platform/references/command-line/

Works like a charm.