How to export environment variable on remote host with GitlabCI - laravel

Question

I'm using GitlabCI to deploy my Laravel applications.
I'm wondering how should I manage the .env file. As far as I've understood I just need to put the .env.example under version control and not the one with the real values.
I've set all the keys my app needs inside Gitlab Settings -> CI/CD -> Environment Variables and I can use them on the runner, for example to retrieve the SSH private key to connect to the remote host, but how should I deploy these variables to the remote host as well? Should I write them with bash in a "runtime generated" .env file and then copy it? Should I export them via ssh on the remote host? Which is the correct way to manage this?

Answer 1

If you open to another solution i propose using fabric(fabfile) i give you an example:
create .env.default with variable like :
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=%(HOST)s
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=%(USER)s
DB_PASSWORD=%(PASSWORD)s
After installing fabric add fabfile on you project directory:
from fabric.api import env , run , put
prod_env = {
'name' : 'prod' ,
'user' : 'user_ssh',
'deploy_to' : '/path_to_project',
'hosts' : ['ip_server'],
}
def set_config(env_config):
for key in env_config:
env[key] = env_config[key]
def prod():
set_config(prod_env)
def deploy(password,host,user):
run("cd %s && git pull -r",env.deploy_to)
process_template(".env.default",".env" , { 'PASSWORD' : password , 'HOST' : host,'USER': user } )
put( ".env" , "/path_to_projet/.env" )
def process_template(template , output , context ):
import os
basename = os.path.basename(template)
output = open(output, "w+b")
text = None
with open(template) as inputfile:
text = inputfile.read()
if context:
text = text % context
#print " processed \n : %s" % text
output.write(text)
output.close()
Now you can run from you local to test script :
fab prod deploy:password="pass",user="user",host="host"
It will deploy project on your server and check if it process .env
If it works now it's time for gitlab ci this is an example file :
image: python:2.7
before_script:
- pip install 'fabric<2.0'
# Setup SSH deploy keys
- 'which ssh-agent || ( apt-get install -qq openssh-client )'
- eval $(ssh-agent -s)
- ssh-add <(echo "$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY")
- mkdir -p ~/.ssh
- '[[ -f /.dockerenv ]] && echo -e "Host *\n\tStrictHostKeyChecking no\n\n" > ~/.ssh/config'
deploy_staging:
type: deploy
script:
- fab prod deploy:password="$PASSWORD",user="$USER",host="$HOST"
only:
- master
$SSH_PRIVATE_KEY,$PASSWORD,$USER,$HOST is environnement variable gitlab,you should add a $SSH_PRIVATE_KEY private key which have access to the server.
Hope i don't miss a step.