PHP - Application config file stored as - ini,php,sql,cached,php class,JSON,php array?

php sql configuration configuration-files
Mark picture Mark · Nov 27, 2009 · Viewed 13k times · Source

I am trying to decide on the best way to store my applications configuration settings. There are so many options.

The majority of applications I have seen have used a simple require and a PHP file that contains variables. There seem to be far more advanced techniques out there.

What have you used? What is most efficient? What is most secure?

Answer

gahooa picture gahooa · Nov 27, 2009

We use a file called Local.php which is excluded from the SCM system. It contains several constants or global variables. For example:

// Local.php
class Setting
{
   const URL = 'http://www.foo.com';
   const DB_User = 'websmith';
}

And it can be referred to anywhere simply by:

Setting::URL

If you need the settings to be writable at runtime, I suggest you use public static variables instead.

Related questions

How can I prevent SQL injection in PHP?

If user input is inserted without modification into an SQL query, then the application becomes vulnerable to SQL injection, like in the following example: $unsafe_variable = $_POST['user_input']; mysql_query("INSERT INTO `table` (`column`) VALUES ('$unsafe_variable')"); That's …

Read More
MySQL query String contains

I've been trying to figure out how I can make a query with MySQL that checks if the value (string $haystack ) in a certain column contains certain data (string $needle), like this: mysql_query(" SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `column`.contains(…

Read More
How to 'insert if not exists' in MySQL?

I started by googling, and found this article which talks about mutex tables. I have a table with ~14 million records. If I want to add more data in the same format, is there a way to ensure the record I …

Read More