what is the best way to handle a config file?

harty83

What is the best way to read, write, retrieve and use variables from a config file? Sessions, globals, includes...

Thanks!
Alan

jsim

If you formulate your question more precisely maybe we would helps... Config file? Sessions? Globals? Includes? What exactly did you need?

harty83

Sorry about that. I have a program I've developed which now gets its system settings from a database. In hind-sight I see that I really shouldn't do that and need to convert it to get its settings from a file instead. However, I'm not not for sure what would be the best way to do that.

I'm envisioning the settings in the file to take the form of:

$config_setting = "whatever";

But what would be the best way to retrieve the config settings and use them throughout my multi-paged program? Should I have a function that reads the file and throws all the settings into a $_SESSION array? Or is there a better way?

Thanks!
Alan

jsim

Anyway you need to include some php code at any script that reads your config, right?
So, you can put all your config values as a php code like

$config->param1 = "something1";
$config->param2 = "something2";

After that in the any script you can use $config->paramN at your code.
The $_SESSIONS array is solves this problem as well, but all your config parameters will be stored for each user that access your page. If it non-changed - what the point?

NogDog

PHP has a nice little built-in function called [man]parse_ini_file/man. I like to use it for actual config files that will be relatively simple for users to edit.