Problem
You want to access a configuration option.
Solution
Use Config::get().
To retrieve a specific configuration value.
$db_charset = Config::get('database.connections.mysql.charset');
If the value doesn't exist, you can provide a default.
$default = Config::get('non.existant.config.key', 'I am default');
Discussion
Laravel caches configuration values within your request.
The first time you retrieve a value within a configuration group, the entire group's configuration values are loaded and merged with any environment specific overrides (see Environment Specific Configurations). These values remain within the current request until it terminates.
This means the next time you retrieve a configuration value for the group there's no need to load the value from the file system. The requested value is quickly returned.
