Cant access environment variables in php - php

Question

Im having issues accessing OS environment variables in php
I have apache/php installed on a centos 6.3 image
in httpd.conf mod mod_env.so is loaded
in php.ini I have set variables_order = "EGPCS"
restarted httpd (many times)
in shell if I type "env" I get
DB_PORT_28017_TCP_PROTO=tcp
HOSTNAME=c6188a8bd77f
DB_NAME=/rockmongo/db
DB_PORT_27017_TCP=tcp://172.17.0.36:27017
TERM=xterm
DB_PORT_28017_TCP_PORT=28017
DB_PORT=tcp://172.17.0.36:27017
DB_PORT_27017_TCP_PORT=27017
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
PWD=/etc/php.d
DB_PORT_27017_TCP_PROTO=tcp
DB_PORT_28017_TCP_ADDR=172.17.0.36
DB_PORT_28017_TCP=tcp://172.17.0.36:28017
SHLVL=1
HOME=/
DB_PORT_27017_TCP_ADDR=172.17.0.36
container=lxc
_=/usr/bin/env
OLDPWD=/etc
which has the variables im after, however if I execute print_r($_ENV); in php I get
Array ( [TERM] => xterm [PATH] => /sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin [PWD] => / [LANG] => C [SHLVL] => 2 [_] => /usr/sbin/httpd )
have also looked in $_SERVER & $GLOBALS.
Interestingly if I execute php -i in shell I see the env variables set correctly in _ENV
I should note im running this in a docker container, however I dont believe it is a issue as variables display correctly in #env & #php -i. I think I have a issue with my httpd/php config
Anyone have advice for this?
thanks

Answer 1

I ended up having a few options
if docker container needs to run multiple services, setting env vars to /etc/environment will make them available for all users. I added the following line to my Dockerfile CMD
CMD ["env | grep _ >> /etc/environment"]
if docker container runs a single service, its best to set the entry point to the desired application, env vars will automatically be passed to application user. this is my Dockerfile CDM & ENTRYPOINT to run apache
ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/sbin/httpd"]
CMD ["-D", "FOREGROUND"]

Answer 2

Dagon is correct.
Unless you logged in as your web server User (apache?) you may not see the same environment variables. You can see them easily with a phpinfo test file though:
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Or you can set your own with a .htaccess file:
SetEnv HTTP_MY_VARIABLE "my value";
From dwitz: You can also make the environment variables available system wide with this:
env | grep _ >> /etc/environment
Sorry can't comment yet... So had to create an answer.

Answer 3

Recently i wrote a library to get values from environment variables and parse to the PHP data types. This library can be used to parse environment variables to PHP data types (like the casting to integer, float, null, boolean), parse the complex data structures like a JSON string and more with the contribution of the commnunity.
The library is available here: https://github.com/jpcercal/environment
As you say, the environment are already loaded. Then, to get the values from environment variable (independently of the environment CLI, Apache, Nginx, PHP Built-in Server and more) to do it:
<?php
// ...
require "vendor/autoload.php";
// ...
var_dump(Cekurte\Environment\Environment::get("YOUR_ENV_VARIABLE_NAME"));
Enjoy it.