How to get phpinfo() variables from php programmatically?

Question

I am attempting to get a list of dependable(consistent across requests) list of "hidden" constants in PHP(as in, the client-side won't know about it in most cases without hacking).

Some of the things I am interested in is the following:

1. ./configure options.
2. I would also like the very first System value in phpinfo.
3. The loaded PHP modules(as shown in the Apache section)
4. The build date of PHP.
5. Registered PHP streams
6. Registered stream socket transports
7. Registered stream filters

How can I get either just a portion of the phpinfo or get these values as a regular string? Note that it doesn't matter if there if markup included, but I don't want to parse the phpinfo as that just seems really slow and surely there is a better way..

Answer 1

Here you go:

1. ini_get_all() or get_loaded_extensions() were the closest I could find
2. php_uname()
3. apache_get_modules()
4. phpversion() was the closest I could find
5. stream_get_wrappers()
6. stream_get_transports()
7. stream_get_filters()

See also get_defined_constants() and some more.

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As Chacha102 mentioned you can also use output control functions and parse the phpinfo():

ob_start();
phpinfo();
$variable = ob_get_contents();
ob_get_clean();

Due to the use of ob_get_clean() it won't mess up other output buffering levels you may be using.