Laravel 5.2 not reading env file

Solution 1:

If any of your .env variables contains white space, make sure you wrap them in double-quotes. For example:

SITE_NAME="My website"

Don't forget to clear your cache before testing:

php artisan config:cache
php artisan config:clear

Solution 2:

From the official Laravel 5.2 Upgrade Notes:

If you are using the config:cache command during deployment, you must make sure that you are only calling the env function from within your configuration files, and not from anywhere else in your application.

If you are calling env from within your application, it is strongly recommended you add proper configuration values to your configuration files and call env from that location instead, allowing you to convert your env calls to config calls.

Reference: https://laravel.com/docs/5.2/upgrade#upgrade-5.2.0