Installing with a .env file

Developing with Concrete
1

We’re trying to move toward installing Concrete CMS with composer and using .env files. However we’ve run into a snag, if we have the .env file in place and try to run the installer we get

Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\TableNotFoundException: An exception occurred while executing 'SELECT t0.pkgID AS pkgID_1, t0.pkgHandle AS pkgHandle_2, t0.pkgVersion AS pkgVersion_3, t0.pkgIsInstalled AS pkgIsInstalled_4, t0.pkgAvailableVersion AS pkgAvailableVersion_5, t0.pkgDescription AS pkgDescription_6, t0.pkgDateInstalled AS pkgDateInstalled_7, t0.pkgName AS pkgName_8 FROM Packages t0 WHERE t0.pkgIsInstalled = ? ORDER BY t0.pkgID ASC' with params [1]:

SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'lamp.Packages' doesn't exist in file /app/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Driver/AbstractMySQLDriver.php on line 61

Caused by
Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDO\Exception: SQLSTATE[42S02]: Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'lamp.Packages' doesn't exist in file /app/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Driver/PDO/Exception.php on line 18

If we remove the .env file and run the installer it installs fine, but then we have the database.php in the application/config directory, which is not what we want.

Has anybody successfully installed Concrete CMS using a .env file for their database credentials?

2

This is the question that I asked myself few years ago.
I am not sure, if Concrete supports using .env files during installation.
I think it doesn’t? I could be wrong though.

This is how I am handling it:

  1. My “boilerplate/skeleton” doesn’t have “database.php” present in config folder, only “live.database.php”.

“live.database.php” is filled with credentials from .env file.

Prefix “live” is added since in .env file I have set environment:
CONCRETE5_ENV=live
This could be “prod” or whatever you want.

  1. Before Concrete installation, I am temporarily changing “live.database.php” to “temp.database.php”

  2. After Concrete installation, I am reverting name change.

  3. File “database.php” was automatically created by Concrete, but it can (or rather should) be safely deleted now.

All these stuff is actually nicely listed at my github:

3

That’s more or less what we’ve been doing too, it just feels like those gyrations shouldn’t be necessary.

4

This is similar to our workflow as well - install without the .env in place and then copy the .env.dist and populate with the details after the install has completed.

It’d be great to see this given a bit of attention :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Definitely make an issue if you think it’s something that needs to be looked at in the core :+1: :

6

I created a GitHub issue for this - v9 Installing with a .env file · Issue #11527 · concretecms/concretecms · GitHub

@EvanCooper I didn’t want to create an issue if this was something that other users had gotten to work and I just wasn’t finding the right documentation (sometimes very difficult) or finding the right reference in the core.