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1.9. .env Config (Self Hosted)

HelpSpot Configuration

## Enable debugging output in the web front end
APP_DEBUG=false
## The base url of the HelpSpot application (without a trailing slash)
APP_URL=https://example.org

## Database type mysql or mssql
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
## The DNS name or IP of the database server
DB_HOST=localhost
## The port for the database server
DB_PORT=3306
## The database name for the helpspot database
DB_DATABASE=helpspot
## The database user name
DB_USERNAME=some_user
## The database user password
DB_PASSWORD=some_pass

## The selected queue driver. Database is default.
QUEUE_CONNECTION=database

Any other configuration setting you used to put into config.php can also be added into the .env file.

To convert old settings to new settings, you can use this formula:

Used to be this in config.php:

define('cHD_FOOBAR', 'some-value');

Can now be this within .env:

cHD_FOOBAR="some-value"

Secondary Portals

Secondary portals can optionally use their own .env file as well. If the Portal Path is, for example, /var/www/helpspot/public/some-portal, you can add a .env file to that path: /var/www/helpspot/public/some-portal/.env.

Any items added here will over-ride the settings from the main .env file configuration file.

If .env files are used in secondary portals, it will be important to configure the web server to not serve .env files if requested. Blocking requests for any "dot-file" (files that start with a period) is a common configuration:

Nginx:

## Disable access to all dot files, except for ".well-known",
## which is used for SSL generation
location ~* /\.(?!well-known\/) {
    deny all;
    access_log off;
    log_not_found off;
}

Apache:

## Disable access to all dot files, except for ".well-known",
## which is used for SSL generation
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} "!(^|/)\.well-known/([^./]+./?)+$" [NC]
    RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -d [OR]
    RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -f
    RewriteRule "(^|/)\." - [F]
</IfModule>

The New Configuration File

The new configuration file (.env) looks like this:

APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://example.org

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=helpspot
DB_USERNAME=some_user
DB_PASSWORD=some_pass

QUEUE_CONNECTION=database

Maping old config to new config

The following configurations are no longer defined within a configuration file:

• cDBCHARSET
• cDBCOLLATION
• SEARCH_ENGINE
• cSEARCHHOST
• cSEARCHPORT
• cBASEPATH
• cDATADIR

The following configurations map to the new configuration fields:

• cDBTYPE => DB_CONNECTION (note that valid values now are mysql or sqlsrv - Value mssql for database type is no longer valid)
• cDBHOSTNAME => DB_HOST
• DB_PORT => This is a new value. Note that sqlserver value 127.0.0.1,1433 will need to be split into two values (hsotname and port are separate)
• cDBUSERNAME => DB_USERNAME
• cDBPASSWORD => DB_PASSWORD
• cDBNAME => DB_DATABASE
• cHOST => APP_URL
• cDEBUG => APP_DEBUG

Fresh Installations

New installations can create a new .env file (or copy the .env.example file and replace values as needed).

Updates

We've provided a script to that reads the old config.php file (assuming it's located at C:\Program Files (x86)\helpspot\helpspot\config.php) and generates a .env file:

Working directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\helpspot\helpspot

Command: ..\php\php.exe -c ..\php\php.ini hs config:convert. This command creates (or over-write) file C:\Program Files (x86)\helpspot\helpspot\.env

For testing, you can run ..\php\php.exe -c ..\php\php.ini hs config:convert --dump to see the text output it would otherwise create.

Hidden Settings

Setting MAINTENANCE_MODE=true can be used within the .env file to force maintenance mode.