Constants in Laravel 5.7 throw already defined error - php

Question

I have created a project in Laravel 5.7 and created the file constants.php in config directory. When I tried to run php artisan config:cache, I am getting the following error.
"ErrorException : Constant XXX_XXX already defined"
I have defined all the constants as define('XXXX_XXXX', 'bla bla'); All these are standard constants needed for my package.
I have done the following:
I have searched the whole project and it is clear that I have never defined the same anywhere else.
If I remove that constant, it shows error at the next define().
If I remove the file from config directory, the artisan command gets executed successfully and I can see the config cache file in bootstrap/cache directory. but my program aborts due to error (as constants are not defined) even after I paste back the file in config directory.
If I remove the config cache file from the bootstrap/cache directory, the code gets executed perfectly normal ( i have not ran the command config:cache).
I very much need this constants and the same time cache the configs to run. I am not able guess the problem.
Note : Contents of config/contants.php all are define('XXX', 'xxx'); Simply echo XYZ; wherever needed. Standard php constants.

Answer 1

try this way
define constant value below
if (!defined('constant')) define('constant', 'value');

Answer 2

I am not sure whether it is correct but the way it worked is as follows:
I moved the constants.php from App/config/ to App/ (along with other models)
I modified the composer.json in the "autoload" with
"files": [
"app/constants.php"
]
I ran composer dump-autoload
Then I ran the php artisan config:cache
It had build the new config file in bootstrap and the code is executing normal.

Answer 3

i have a great solution for this. please follow this step :
1 -> add new file constantHelper.php inside directory app/Helpers
2 -> edit file composer.json and set auto load files
{
"autoload": {
"files": [
"app/Helpers/constantHelper.php"
]
},
"autoload-dev": {
"files": [
"app/Helpers/constantHelper.php"
]
}
}
this is my complete code inside composer.json
{
"name": "nurzazin/lumen",
"description": "The Laravel Lumen Framework.",
"keywords": [
"laravel",
"lumen"
],
"license": "MIT",
"type": "project",
"require": {
"php": "7.3.*",
"ext-json": "*",
"ext-openssl": "*"
},
"require-dev": {
"fzaninotto/faker": "^1.4",
"mockery/mockery": "^1.0",
"phpunit/phpunit": "^7.0",
"wn/lumen-generators": "^1.3"
},
"autoload": {
"files": [
"app/Helpers/constantHelper.php"
],
"classmap": [
"database/seeds",
"database/factories"
],
"psr-4": {
"App\\": "app/"
}
},
"autoload-dev": {
"files": [
"app/Helpers/constantHelper.php"
],
"classmap": [
"tests/"
]
},
"minimum-stability": "dev",
"prefer-stable": true
}
3 -> run command composer install or composer dump-autoload