Creating a config file in PHP

Question

I want to create a config file for my PHP project  but I m not sure what the best way to do this is   I have 3 ideas so far   1-Use Variable   config  hostname      localhost    config  dbuser      dbuser    config  dbpassword      dbpassword    config  dbname      dbname    config  sitetitle      sitetitle     2-Use Const  define  DB NAME    test    define  DB USER    root    define  DB PASSWORD        define  DB HOST    localhost    define  TITLE    sitetitle      3-Use Database  I will be using the config in classes so I m not sure which way would be the best or if there is a better way

User · Accepted Answer

One simple but elegant way is to create a config.php file (or whatever you call it) that just returns an array:

<?php

return array(
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'username' => 'root',
);

And then:

$configs = include('config.php');

User · Answer

Well - it would be sort of difficult to store your database configuration data in a database - don t ya think   But really  this is a pretty heavily opinionated question because any style works really and it s all a matter of preference  Personally  I d go for a configuration variable rather than constants - generally because I don t like things in the global space unless necessary  None of the functions in my codebase should be able to easily access my database password  except my database connection logic  - so I d use it there and then likely destroy it   Edit  to answer your comment - none of the parsing mechanisms would be the fastest  ini  json  etc  - but they re also not the parts of your application that you d really need to focus on optimizing since the speed difference would be negligible on such small files

User · Answer

Use an INI file is a flexible and powerful solution  PHP has a native function to handle it properly  For example  it is possible to create an INI file like this   app ini   database  db name       mydatabase db user       myuser db password   mypassword   application  app email   mailer myapp com app url     myapp com   So the only thing you need to do is call    ini   parse ini file  app ini      Then you can access the definitions easily using the  ini array   echo  ini  db name           mydatabase echo  ini  db user           myuser echo  ini  db password       mypassword echo  ini  app email         mailer myapp com   IMPORTANT  For security reasons the INI file must be in a non public folder

User · Answer

Here is my way       lt  php      define  DEBUG  0        define  PRODUCTION  1           development mode   DEBUG   PRODUCTION       development mode   PRODUCTION          Website root path for links       app path    http   192 168 0 234 dealer            User interface files path       ui path    ui          Image gallery path       gallery path    ui gallery           mysqlserver    quot localhost quot        mysqluser    quot root quot        mysqlpass    quot  quot        mysqldb    quot dealer plus quot         gt   Any doubts please comment

User · Answer

Define will make the constant available everywhere in your class without needing to use global  while the variable requires global in the class  I would use DEFINE  but again  if the db params should change during program execution you might want to stick with variable

User · Answer

I normally end up creating a single conn php file that has my database connections   Then i include that file in all files that require database queries

User · Answer

What about something like this   class Configuration        private  config            public function   construct  configIniFilePath                 this- gt config   parse ini file  configIniFilePath  true                         Gets the value for the specified setting name                 param string  name the setting name         param string  section optional  the name of the section containing the            setting         return string null the value of the setting  or null if it doesn t exist             public function getConfiguration  name   section   null                 configValue   null           if   section     null                if  array key exists  name   this- gt config                      configValue    this- gt config  name                           else               if  array key exists  section   this- gt config                      sectionSettings    this- gt config  section                   if  array key exists  name   sectionSettings                          configValue    sectionSettings  name                                                      return  configValue

User · Answer

You can create a config class witch static properties  class Config        static  dbHost    localhost       static  dbUsername    user       static  dbPassword     pass       then you can simple use it   Config   dbHost       Sometimes in my projects I use a design pattern SINGLETON to access configuration data  It s very comfortable in use   Why   For example you have 2 data source in your project  And you can choose witch of them is enabled    mysql json   Somewhere in config file you choose    dataSource    mysql     or  json    When you change source whole app shoud switch to new data source  work fine and dont need change in code   Example   Config   class Config                static  dataSource    mysql                 Singleton class   class AppConfig       private static  instance      private  dataSource       private function   construct                  this- gt init               private function init                 switch  Config   dataSource                        case  mysql                    this- gt dataSource   new StorageMysql                    break              case  json                    this- gt dataSource   new StorageJson                    break              default                   this- gt dataSource   new StorageMysql                         public static function getInstance                 if  empty self   instance                 self   instance   new self                      return self   instance             public function getDataSource                 return  this- gt dataSource                and somewhere in your code  eg  in some service class     container- gt getItemsLoader AppConfig  getInstance  - gt getDataSource       getItemsLoader need Object of specific data source class by dependency injection   We can obtain an AppConfig object from any place in the system and always get the same copy  thanks to static   The init    method of the class is called In the constructor  which guarantees only one execution  Init   body checks The value of the config  dataSource  and create new object of specific data source class  Now our script can get object and operate on it  not knowing even which specific implementation actually exists

User · Answer

If you think you ll be using more than 1 db for any reason  go with the variable because you ll be able to change one parameter to switch to an entirely different db  I e  for testing   autobackup  etc

User · Answer

I use a slight evolution of  hugo leonardo  s solution     lt  php  return  object  array       host    gt   localhost        username    gt   root        pass    gt   password        database    gt   db        gt    This allows you to use the object syntax when you include the php    configs- gt host instead of  configs  host     Also  if your app has configs you need on the client side  like for an Angular app   you can have this config php file contain all your configs  centralized in one file instead of one for JavaScript and one for PHP   The trick would then be to have another PHP file that would echo only the client side info  to avoid showing info you don t want to show like database connection string   Call it say get app info php     lt  php       configs   include  config php        echo json encode  configs- gt app info      gt    The above assuming your config php contains an app info parameter    lt  php  return  object  array       host    gt   localhost        username    gt   root        pass    gt   password        database    gt   db        app info    gt  array           appName   gt  App Name            appURL   gt   http   yourURL                 gt    So your database s info stays on the server side  but your app info is accessible from your JavaScript  with for example a  http get  get app info php   then       type of call

User · Answer

The options I see with relative merits   weaknesses are   File based mechanisms  These require that your code look in specific locations to find the ini file  This is a difficult problem to solve and one which always crops up in large PHP applications  However you will likely need to solve the problem in order to find the PHP code which gets incorporated   re-used at runtime   Common approaches to this are to always use relative directories  or to search from the current directory upwards to find a file exclusively named in the base directory of the application    Common file formats used for config files are PHP code  ini formatted files  JSON  XML  YAML and serialized PHP  PHP code  This provides a huge amount of flexibility for representing different data structures  and  assuming it is processed via include or require  the parsed code will be available from the opcode cache - giving a performance benefit   The include path provides a means for abstracting the potential locations of the file without relying on additional code   On the other hand  one of the main reasons for separating configuration from code is to separate responsibilities  It provides a route for injecting additional code into the runtime   If the configuration is created from a tool  it may be possible to validate the data in the tool  but there is no standard function to escape data for embedding into PHP code as exists for HTML  URLs  MySQL statements  shell commands      Serialized data This is relatively efficient for small amounts of configuration  up to around 200 items  and allows for use of any PHP data structure  It requires very little code to create parse the data file  so you can instead expend your efforts on ensuring that the file is only written with appropriate authorization    Escaping of content written to the file is handled automatically   Since you can serialize objects  it does create an opportunity for invoking code simply by reading the configuration file  the   wakeup magic method    Structured file  Storing it as a INI file as suggested by Marcel or JSON or XML also provides a simple api to map the file into a PHP data structure  and with the exception of XML  to escape the data and create the file  while eliminating the code invocation vulnerability using serialized PHP data   It will have similar performance characteristics to the serialized data   Database storage  This is best considered where you have a huge amount of configuration but are selective in what is needed for the current task - I was surprised to find that at around 150 data items  it was quicker to retrieve the data from a local MySQL instance than to unserialize a datafile   OTOH its not a good place to store the credentials you use to connect to your database   The execution environment  You can set values in the execution environment PHP is running in    This removes any requirement for the PHP code to look in a specific place for the config  OTOH it does not scale well to large amounts of data and is difficult to change universally at runtime   On the client  One place I ve not mentioned for storing configuration data is at the client  Again the network overhead means that this does not scale well to large amounts of configuration  And since the end user has control over the data it must be stored in a format where any tampering is detectable  i e  with a cryptographic signature  and should not contain any information which is compromised by its disclosure  i e  reversibly encrypted    Conversely  this has a lot of benefits for storing sensitive information which is owned by the end user - if you are not storing this on the server  it cannot be stolen from there   Network Directories Another interesting place to store configuration information is in DNS   LDAP  This will work for a small number of small pieces of information - but you don t need to stick to 1st normal form - consider  for example SPF    The infrastucture supports caching  replication and distribution  Hence it works well for very large infrastructures   Version Control systems  Configuration  like code should be managed and version controlled - hence getting the configuration directly from your VC system is a viable solution  But often this comes with a significant performance overhead hence caching may be advisable

[php] Creating a config file in PHP

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