Configuration

BioTime resolves its configuration lazily — nothing is sent over the network until you call a resource method. There are three ways to configure it, all backed by the same Config class.

Configuration options

These are every option Config accepts (src/Config.php):

Option	Constructor property	.env variable (via Config::auto())	Default	Description
Host / IP	host	BIOTIME_IP (falls back to BIOTIME_HOST)	127.0.0.1	Device or server hostname/IP
Port	port	BIOTIME_PORT	8081	Device or server port
Username	username	BIOTIME_USERNAME	''	API username used to obtain a token
Password	password	BIOTIME_PASSWORD	''	API password used to obtain a token
HTTPS	https	BIOTIME_HTTPS	false	Use https:// instead of http://
Verify TLS certificate	verify	see note below	false	Verify the HTTPS server certificate
Timeout	timeout	BIOTIME_TIMEOUT	15	Guzzle request timeout, in seconds
Token TTL	tokenTtlSeconds	BIOTIME_TOKEN_TTL	43200 (12h)	How long a cached token is considered valid
Token cache key	tokenCacheKey	BIOTIME_TOKEN_CACHE_KEY	zkteco_device_token	Cache key used to store the token
Cache	cache	— (object only)	null (in-memory)	Any PSR-16 Psr\SimpleCache\CacheInterface

WARNING

The TLS-verification environment variable has an inconsistency worth knowing about: the shipped src/config/biotime.php config file reads BIOTIME_VERIFY_HTTPS, but Config::fromEnv() (used when no config file is present) currently reads a variable literally named BIOTIME_verify (lower-case verify, prefixed with BIOTIME_) rather than BIOTIME_VERIFY_HTTPS. If you rely on plain environment variables (no config/biotime.php file) and need to control certificate verification, either set both variable names, or configure verify explicitly via Config::fromArray() to avoid depending on the env-var name.

Option A — environment variables / .env

If no config/biotime.php file exists at your working directory, Config::auto() falls back to reading environment variables (via getenv(), $_ENV, or $_SERVER) with the BIOTIME_ prefix:

BIOTIME_IP=192.168.1.50
BIOTIME_PORT=8081
BIOTIME_USERNAME=admin
BIOTIME_PASSWORD=secret
BIOTIME_HTTPS=false
BIOTIME_TIMEOUT=15
BIOTIME_TOKEN_TTL=43200

use BioTime\BioTime;

// Loads ./config/biotime.php if it exists, otherwise reads BIOTIME_* env vars
$biotime = new BioTime();

You can also build a Config directly from environment variables with a custom prefix:

use BioTime\Config;

$config = Config::fromEnv('BIOTIME_');

Option B — a config/biotime.php file

The package ships a template at src/config/biotime.php. Copy it into your project's config/ directory (relative to your working directory) and edit it directly. It still falls back to $_ENV/getenv() values, so it's safe to commit without hard-coding secrets:

<?php

return [
    'ip'       => $_ENV['BIOTIME_IP']       ?? getenv('BIOTIME_IP')       ?: '192.168.1.50',
    'port'     => (int) ($_ENV['BIOTIME_PORT'] ?? getenv('BIOTIME_PORT') ?: 8081),
    'username' => $_ENV['BIOTIME_USERNAME'] ?? getenv('BIOTIME_USERNAME') ?: 'admin',
    'password' => $_ENV['BIOTIME_PASSWORD'] ?? getenv('BIOTIME_PASSWORD') ?: 'secret',
    'https'    => filter_var($_ENV['BIOTIME_HTTPS'] ?? getenv('BIOTIME_HTTPS') ?: false, FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN),
    'verify'   => filter_var($_ENV['BIOTIME_VERIFY_HTTPS'] ?? getenv('BIOTIME_VERIFY_HTTPS') ?: false, FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN),
    'timeout'  => (int) ($_ENV['BIOTIME_TIMEOUT'] ?? getenv('BIOTIME_TIMEOUT') ?: 15),
];

Config::auto() looks for this file at getcwd() . '/config/biotime.php' by default, or you can pass an explicit path:

use BioTime\Config;

$config = Config::fromFile(__DIR__ . '/config/biotime.php');

Option C — build Config programmatically

Useful for multiple devices, a custom cache, or tests:

use BioTime\BioTime;
use BioTime\Config;

$config = Config::fromArray([
    'ip'       => '192.168.1.50',
    'port'     => 8081,
    'username' => 'admin',
    'password' => 'secret',
    'https'    => false,
    'verify'   => true,
    'timeout'  => 15,
    'cache'    => $psr16Cache, // optional, any PSR-16 CacheInterface
]);

$biotime = new BioTime($config);

Config::fromArray() also accepts host as an alternative key to ip, token_ttl, and token_cache_key.

Caching the token

If you pass a PSR-16 cache implementation, the device token is stored there under tokenCacheKey for tokenTtlSeconds seconds. If you don't provide one, the SDK falls back to an in-memory static store that only lives for the current PHP process — fine for a single script or one-off job, but it won't persist the token across separate HTTP requests. See Caching for details, and Laravel for how the Laravel provider wires up the app's cache store automatically.

Next step

Continue to Quick start.