php - What is the role of app key in laravel?

Question

I just watched the relevant tutorial on the laravel project cloning process. I am not sure about the function of the app key in the article. I am currently using laravel 5.1, and I can’t find it in Baidu or the manual. Could you please tell me the specific function of the app key, thank you very much.

Answer 1

The framework is described like this:

This key is used by the Illuminate encrypter service and should be set to a random, 32 character string, otherwise these encrypted strings will not be safe. Please do this before deploying an application!

That is, this key is a random string, used to implement the encrypt (encryption) service in the framework, such as storing the user's session, cookies, etc., to ensure information security. The key can be updated through the artisan command.