Hidden Laravel config env paths you might not know

Laravel has some interesting env config keys for storage and cache paths that aren't mentioned in the official documentation. Maybe you'll never need to customize them in your entire developer life, but I think knowing they exist is fun!

By default, in your Laravel application, you usually have these folders:

• bootstrap/cache: stores your application cached files such as routes, configs, events
• storage/: stores compiled views, cache, session files, logs and upload files, etc

For the storage folder in deployment, I actually create a folder outside the application and symlink it to the app, so we don't erase uploaded files every time we deploy. I think you do too.

But actually, if you look at the code in Illuminate/Foundation/Application.php, you can see there are some hidden env configs that may be useful.

Customize storage path

You can modify the default storage path by calling $app->useStoragePath($yourPath) in bootstrap/app.php.

public function useStoragePath($path)
{
    $this->storagePath = $path;

    $this->instance('path.storage', $path);

    return $this;
}

Customize framework cache paths

Now take a look at this normalizeCachePath function. If the value starts with an absolute prefix like / or \, it will use an absolute path; otherwise, it will use a relative path.

protected function normalizeCachePath($key, $default)
{
    if (is_null($env = Env::get($key))) {
        return $this->bootstrapPath($default);
    }

    return Str::startsWith($env, $this->absoluteCachePathPrefixes)
            ? $env
            : $this->basePath($env);
}

And there are some hidden configs if you want to customize the bootstrap/cache folder. This is useful when you want to ship an application somewhere you don't have write permission in the application folder xD.

You can set values for these keys in the .env file:

• APP_SERVICES_CACHE
• APP_PACKAGES_CACHE
• APP_CONFIG_CACHE
• APP_ROUTES_CACHE
• APP_EVENTS_CACHE