Cake 2.x Environment Variables and database.php file.

So I'm trying to horseshoe an existing Cake 2.x application running on Ubuntu 14.04 into a docker container. I'm pretty sure there's better ways of doing it, but I'm basically just trying to replicate what I have inside a docker container.

The one big change though is environment variables. When the container launches, a config file gets pulled in and some environment variables set. These variables have to be used in various configuration files for the cake application. I set them in the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/default.conf file with there "SetEnv" directive. I also "export" each variable and it all seems to be working fine. I use the "getenv()" method to get each of the variables into my config files.

The problem I seem to have is using environment variables in the database.php file. I've tried both pulling the variable directly from the environment with "getenv()" and setting it in my environment_settings.php file with "Configure::write()" and then using "Configure::read()" in the database.php file, but neither of these methods work.

Is there a reason why this is happening? And what can I do to fix this?

1 thought on “Cake 2.x Environment Variables and database.php file.”

  1. Running Cake inside an Ubuntu container (though I’d recommend Alpine Linux if that’s possible to keep the image small) is not a big problem (I do it all the time).

    What is the error that you get? are you sure that the environment variables are being slapped into the container properly?

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