Custom INI file for PHP App

Anon

I'd like to make properties file for my PHP app. I'm looking for the same kind of functionality as the Java properties system. I'd prefer it if the custom values were loaded only when PHP was loaded, but if I had to reload this everytime a page was called it would have to do.

I know I can just define a bunch of variables and require the file, but that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution to me.

Thanks, Matt

Anon

requiring a settings file seems very elegant to me.....

what would your ideal solution be? php to always set certain values no matter what?

making php application specific seems very unelegant to me. what if you have pages that don't require those values?

Anon

I don't want my properties to simply be variables in the global scope. That's silly. When I access a configuration property I want to KNOW that I'm accessing one, and I don't want to have to reload these with every single page view. I've also like to be able to use a standard properties/ini file format rather than php script format. I could write my own properties class that would parse a file, giving me a common container and source of control for my properties, but I can't think of a way to do it without parsing the file every single time a page is loaded. I suppose I could just parse it every time a visitor comes to the site, putting a new copy in the session for that visitor, but that's silly. I want properties that can always be accessed and only have to be loaded once. Anyone have a solution?

Anon

If it helps I have a library I wrote to do such a thing I create a configuration file with categories ad read it in, store it in a session for users to access as the propigate throught the site. I have reused it for many apps. Has kind of windows ini structure:

[ENV]
rootpath=/;
mypath=/export/home/user

[SETTINGS]
textcolor=#234534;

etc...

this creates an associative array that I can access like so.
echo $Settings[SETTINGS][textcolor];

would it be of any help?