Store configuration management

The default configurations for your store are stored in a config.xml for the appropriate module. When you change settings in the Commerce Admin or the CLI bin/magento config:set command, the changes are reflected in the core database, specifically the core_config_data table. These settings overwrite the default configurations stored in the config.xml file.

Store settings, which refer to the configurations in the Admin Stores > Settings > Configuration section, are stored in the deployment configuration files based on the type of configuration:

Configuration management provides a way to deploy consistent store settings across your environments with minimal downtime using Pipeline deployment. Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure project includes the build server, build and deploy scripts, and deployment environments designed with the pipeline deployment strategy in mind.

Configuration override scheme

All system configurations are set during build and deploy phases according to the following override scheme:

To summarize, environment variables override all other values.

If the same setting is configured in multiple places, the application relies on the following configuration hierarchy to determine which value to apply to the environment :

Configuration dump

You can use the following ece-tools command to generate a config.php file that contains all the current store configurations:

./vendor/bin/ece-tools config:dump

The data “dumped” to the app/etc/config.php file becomes locked, which means the corresponding field in the Commerce Admin becomes read-only. The config.php file includes only the settings that you configure. It does not lock the default values. Locking only the values you update also ensures that all extensions used in the Staging and Production environments do not break due to read-only configurations, especially Fastly.

Sensitive data

Any sensitive configurations export to the app/etc/env.php file when you use the bin/magento app:config:dump command. You can set sensitive values using the CLI command: bin/magento config:sensitive:set. See Sensitive and environment-specific settings in the Commerce PHP Extensions guide to learn how to designate configuration settings as being sensitive or system-specific.

See a list of Sensitive or system-specific settings in the Configuration Guide.

SCD performance

Depending on the size of your store, you may have a large number of static content files to deploy. Normally, static content deploys during the deploy phase when the application is in Maintenance mode. The most optimal configuration is to generate static content during the build phase. See Choosing a deploy strategy.

If you have enabled Configuration Management after dumping the configurations, you should move the SCD_* variables from the deploy stage to the build stage to properly enable static content generation during the build phase. See Environment variables.

Before Configuration Management:

  deploy:
    CRON_CONSUMERS_RUNNER:
      cron_run: true
      consumers: []
    SCD_STRATEGY: compact
    SCD_MATRIX:
      ...
    REDIS_USE_SLAVE_CONNECTION: 1

After enabling Configuration Management:

Move the SCD_* variables to the build stage:

  deploy:
    CRON_CONSUMERS_RUNNER:
      cron_run: true
      consumers: []
    REDIS_USE_SLAVE_CONNECTION: 1
  build:
    SCD_STRATEGY: compact
    SCD_MATRIX:
      ...

Procedure to manage your settings

The following illustrates a high-level overview of this process:

To configure your store and generate a configuration file:

After the deployment is complete, log in to the Admin for the updated environment to verify the settings. Continue to merge any additional configurations to the Staging and Production environments, as needed.

Update configurations

When you modify your environment through the Admin and run the command again, new configurations are appended to the code in the config.php file.

Restore configuration files

Copies of the original app/etc/env.php and app/etc/config.php files were created during the deployment process and store in the same folder. The following shows the BAK (backup files) and PHP (original files) in the same app/etc folder:

...
config.php.bak
di.xml
env.php.bak
vendor_path.php
config.php
db_schema.xml
env.php
...

Older configurations used the app/etc/config.local.php file. See Migrate older configurations.

To restore configuration files:

Migrate older configurations

If you upgrade to Adobe Commerce on cloud infrastructure 2.2 or later, you may want to migrate settings from the config.local.php file to your new config.php file. If the configuration settings in your Admin match the contents of the file, follow the instructions to generate and add the config.php file.

If they differ, you can append content from the config.local.php file to your new config.php file:

You only complete this migration once. After migration, use the config.php file.

Change locales

You can change your store locales without following a complex configuration import and export process, if you have SCD_ON_DEMAND enabled. You can update the locales using the Admin.

You can add another locale to the Staging or Production environment by enabling SCD_ON_DEMAND in an integration branch, generate an updated config.php file with the new locale information, and copy the configuration file to the target environment.