Question

All,

I have a config xml file in the following format:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configdata>
    <development>
        <siteTitle>You are doing Development</siteTitle>
    </development>
    <test extends="development">
        <siteTitle>You are doing Testing</siteTitle>
    </test>
    <production extends="development">
        <siteTitle>You are in Production</siteTitle>
    </production>
</configdata>

To read this config file to apply environment settings, currently I am using, the following code in index.php file:

$appEnvironment = "production";
$config = new Zend_Config_Xml('/config/settings.xml', $appEnvironment );

To deploy this code on multiple environments, as user has to change index.php file. Instead of doing that, is it possible to maintain an attribute in the xml file, “say active=true”. Based on which the Zend_Config_Xml will know which section of the xml file settings to read?

Answer 1

If you’re using Zend Framework, I highly suggest you just use the APPLICATION_ENV constant that’s defined in Zend Application’s default index.php. If you’re not, you could probably do this regardless.

// Define application environment
defined('APPLICATION_ENV')
    || define('APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'production'));

It corresponds to your the environmental variable set in your site’s .htaccess file:

//.htaccess
SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV development

You could then load your config file like so:

$config = new Zend_Config_Xml('/config/settings.xml', APPLICATION_ENV );

Then to switch environments, all that needs to be done is switch the value in the .htaccess file. On my server, I have my deployment script set up to automatically switch the value based on which environment I’m deploying to:

$ sed -i 's/development/production/' /path/to/site/root/.htaccess