title: What is the significance of Application key in a Laravel Application?
body: <p>from laravel <a href="https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/installation#configuration" rel="noreferrer">docs</a> </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Application Key The next thing you should do after installing Laravel
    is set your application key to a random string. If you installed
    Laravel via Composer or the Laravel installer, this key has already
    been set for you by the php artisan key:generate command.</p>
    
    <p>Typically, this string should be 32 characters long. The key can be
    set in the .env environment file. If you have not renamed the
    .env.example file to .env, you should do that now. <strong>If the application
    key is not set, your user sessions and other encrypted data will not
    be secure!</strong></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What I know about application key is: If the application key is not set, generally I do get an exception. </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>How do this random string help to secure the session?</li>
  <li>What are the other uses of this application key?</li>
  <li>If I use the same application key everywhere (like staging, production etc..) does it make the application less secure? </li>
  <li>what are some best practices for this key</li>
  </ul>