Attention

TYPO3 v10 has reached end-of-life as of April 30th 2023 and is no longer being maintained. Use the version switcher on the top left of this page to select documentation for a supported version of TYPO3.

Need more time before upgrading? You can purchase Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) for TYPO3 v10 here: TYPO3 ELTS.

Environment

Since version 9.x the TYPO3 core includes an environment class. This class contains all environment-specific information, e.g. paths within the filesystem. This implementation replaces previously used global variables and constants like PATH_site.

The fully qualified class name is \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Core\Environment. The class provides static methods to access the necessary information.

To simulate environments in testing scenarios, the initialize()-method can be called to adjust the information.

Environment PHP API

getProjectPath()

The environment provides the path to the folder containing the composer.json. For projects without Composer setup, this is equal to getPublicPath().

getPublicPath()

The environment provides the path to the public web folder with index.php for the TYPO3 frontend. This was previously PATH_site. For projects without Composer setup, this is equal to getProjectPath().

getVarPath()

The environment provides the path to the var folder. This folder contains data like logs, sessions, locks, and cache files.

For projects with Composer setup, the value is getProjectPath() . '/var', so it is outside of the web document root - not within getPublicPath().

Without Composer, the value is getPublicPath() . '/typo3temp/var', so within the web document root - a situation that is not optimal from a security point of view.

getConfigPath()

The environment provides the path to typo3conf. This folder contains TYPO3 global configuration files and folders, e.g. LocalConfiguration.php.

For projects with Composer setup, the value is getProjectPath() . '/config', so it is outside of the web document root - not within getPublicPath().

Without Composer, the value is getPublicPath() . '/typo3conf', so within the web document root - a situation that is not optimal from a security point of view.

getLabelsPath()

The environment provides the path to labels, respective l10n folder. This folder contains downloaded translation files.

For projects with Composer setup, the value is getVarPath() . '/labels', so it is outside of the web document root - not within getPublicPath().

Without Composer, the value is getPublicPath() . '/typo3conf/l10n', so within the web document root - a situation that is not optimal from a security point of view.

getCurrentScript()

Returns the path and filename to the current PHP script.

getContext()

Returns the current Application Context, usually defined via the TYPO3_CONTEXT environment variable. May be one of Production, Testing, or Development with optional sub-contexts like Production/Staging.

Example, test for production context:

typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration.php
// use \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Core\Environment;

$applicationContext = Environment::getContext();
if ($applicationContext->isProduction()) {
   // do something only when in production context
}