So like most people when I write my web applications I create a config.inc.php of some description and put that in the directory with the application. However, when it comes to roll out the app this causes problems due to the config differences between the live and development environments so the config file needs to be changed once the new version has been put live.

This isn’t ideal so the first obvious thing to do is to move the config file out of the web application directory to somewhere else (for example: /etc/webapp.conf). Now when a version of the web app is released you simply just have to untar the web app tarball into the correct place and everything will just work without any post-install manual tweaking.

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t work for multi-developer environments where a developer might need to tweak the config file for a new feature they’re testing, but the web app is now looking at the /etc/webapp.conf file no matter what developer it is.

The solution I then came up with was another config file, say called .dev-config.inc.php which is (optionally) kept in the same directory as the web app but excluded from your version control software so it’s never checked in. Then you simple change the web app to check for this file and if it doesn’t exist load the main config file so now a developer can create a config file for just their tree. For example:-

 
if(file_exists(dirname(__FILE__)."/.dev-config.inc.php")) {
    require_once(dirname(__FILE__)."/.dev-config.inc.php);
} else {
    require("/etc/webapp.conf");
}

Now once we have this setup everything works and developers can change the config files if they need too (e.g. database dsn’s) and the live system can be deployed by simply untar’ing a tarball.

The next thing I noticed was if I need to add a new config file option I need to add it in all the config files, even if it’s just a system config option that won’t change no matter what environment it’s in. This is a bit of chore given I’m just a lazy developer…

So the next change I make to the config file system is to reinstate the config.inc.php in the web app directory with one key difference, it now has the following design pattern and it is responsible for including our main config file:-

if(file_exists(dirname(__FILE__)."/.dev-config.inc.php")) {
    require_once(dirname(__FILE__)."/.dev-config.inc.php);
} else {
    require("/etc/webapp.conf");
}

$config = array(
    "A_CONFIG_OPTION"=>TRUE,
    "IS_THIS_OVERKILL"=>"MAYBE"
);

foreach($config as $const=>$value)
    if(!defined($const))
        DEFINE($const, $value);

Now this config file will first load our main web app config file (either /etc/webapp.conf or .dev-config.inc.php) and fill in all the missing (default/system) config options that weren’t needed to be changed in the per-environment config settings. Should that need change, simply just define them and this config file will not set them.

Questions
1. Is this over the top?
2. How does everyone else handle config files?
3. Do their methods solve the issues presented above?

Coding config file, php, web app