envkey-php: ENVKEY invalid. Couldn't load vars.

[nikalas]

I'm trying to incorporate envkey-php into my WordPress theme by functions.php, however I'm getting the error
Fatal error: Uncaught Exception: ENVKEY invalid. Couldn't load vars.

Same thing if I try to load it from index.php or wp-config.php in the WordPress root

I have no problem loading other composer packages, like dotenv (not at the same time though) which is what we're trying to migrate from.

I'm running, under MAMP on mac:
Apache 2.4.46
PHP 8.1
Composer 2.6.8

The thing is, if I run vendor/envkey/envkey-php/ext/envkey-source_2.4.2_darwin_arm64/envkey-source --json --mem-cache --client-name envkey-php --client-version 2.4.3, which is the command ran by Fetcher.php I get the expected keys.

If I load envkey-php from composer in my localhost site (nothing else but phpinfo()), everything works as expected as well.

[danenania]

Hey @nikalas, thanks for providing details on this.

The thing is, if I run vendor/envkey/envkey-php/ext/envkey-source_2.4.2_darwin_arm64/envkey-source --json --mem-cache --client-name envkey-php --client-version 2.4.3, which is the command ran by Fetcher.php I get the expected keys.

When you say you can run this successfully, are you running it from the shell or directly within your php app?

Where are you setting your ENVKEY environment variable? Can you confirm that it's set correctly in your php app? It sounds like it may not be getting through to the envkey-source system call.

[nikalas]

When I run it successfully I do it manually from the shell. When I log the result from the system call in envkey-php (from php) it finds nothing, the system call just returns the same error and then crashes, so ENVKEY env variable is never set inside php.

I simply ran envkey init in the project root (same dir as the I run composer install). I also made a copy of .envkey as .env but this made no difference.

[danenania]

To test an idea on this, could you try adding the following prior to pulling in the envkey-php package:

// Check if ENVKEY is available in $_SERVER or $_ENV and set it as an environment variable
if (isset($_SERVER['ENVKEY'])) {
    putenv("ENVKEY={$_SERVER['ENVKEY']}");
} elseif (isset($_ENV['ENVKEY'])) {
    putenv("ENVKEY={$_ENV['ENVKEY']}");
}

[nikalas]

This worked. How and why? Should it not be enough to just have the .envkey in the same folder? Which by the way does nothing if I remove it.

[danenania]

Great! We will add this to envkey-php and get it released shortly.

The problem seems to be that while system environment variables are forwarded to system calls (like the one to envkey-source) in php, env vars set in $_SERVER and $_ENV are not forwarded. So it seems that your ENVKEY is being set in either $_SERVER or $_ENV for some reason. Calling putenv ensures that the ENVKEY does get passed along to the envkey-source call.

[danenania]

I'd guess it has something to do with how Wordpress handles environment variables.

I'm assuming this was in the context of a development environment and not on a server?

[nikalas]

Yes, this is local dev server. I will be moving forward with testing on a staging server as I confirm this is working. Just as an fyi the key seems to be available as both ENVKEY and REDIRECT_ENVKEY in both $_SERVER and $_ENV

[nikalas]

No, this does not seem correct. Tried it from another project now and the syscall in Fetcher.php once again returns echo 'error: ENVKEY missing '; false.

I have been throwing keys a bit of everywhere trying to get it to work earlier today, so I must have missed cleaning it up somewhere.

Edit: I seem to have set the local key manually in apache httpd.conf, which is why it was available in in $_SERVER and $_ENV. Removing those lines gets me back to not working again.

[nikalas]

Seems the problem is running PHP under Apaches Virtual Host (With FastCGI?) which runs sandboxed. As you say the env's are not exposed to the php service because of this. Which I guess is actually in the ENVKEY documentation. Also nothing to do with WordPress per se.

So the solution here seems to be to, if I understand it correctly:

• Generate a local key for each local app.
• Put it in MAMP under "Additional parameters for directive" for each site as SetEnv ENVKEY <local-key-here>
• Insert your snippet before require_once 'vendor/autoload.php' (I still don't see why this is needed as I can getenv('ENVKEY') and get the local key earlier, but it does not work without it.)

Thank you for you help!

[danenania]

Fyi, that snippet has now been included in envkey-php 2.4.4, so you shouldn't need it in your code any longer after upgrading.