.env file as JSON for Azure Pipeline configuration

Yii 2.0 General Discussions
1

In Yii2, is it possible to use a .env file as JSON for an Azure Pipeline configuration?

2

Yes, you can put JSON as a string in a Yii2 .env file and decode it in PHP using json_decode().
For Azure Pipelines, either read it from .env or pass it as a pipeline variable and decode it the same way.

3

Yes, in Yii you can use environment configuration from a JSON file instead of a traditional .env file, especially for an Microsoft Azure Pipeline setup.

A common approach is:

  • Store configuration as JSON in Azure Pipeline variables or secure files.
  • During deployment, generate parameters/config dynamically.
  • Load the JSON in Yii2 using PHP:
$config = json_decode(file_get_contents(__DIR__ . '/config/env.json'), true);defined('YII_DEBUG') or define('YII_DEBUG', $config['YII_DEBUG']);defined('YII_ENV') or define('YII_ENV', $config['YII_ENV']);

Example env.json:

{  "YII_DEBUG": true,  "YII_ENV": "dev",  "DB_HOST": "localhost",  "DB_NAME": "yii2db"}

In Azure Pipelines, you can create this file during build/release:

- script: |    echo '{      "YII_DEBUG": true,      "YII_ENV": "prod"    }' > config/env.json

This works fine as long as your application loads the JSON before using the values.