Question

For example, I have a config.php:

//default config
$name = 'default name';
$mail = 'default mail';

And I want to use a form to let the user edit the variable, everything is just like the using database, but in this case the difference is it is implement on a PHP file

So, after I get $_POST['name']; $_POST['mail'];, how can I modify the variable and save it in that PHP?

Answer 1

The config file needs to be in PHP? You can hack together a quick configuration array into an external file using var_export

The config file config.php

$config = array(
  'name' => 'My Name',
  'email' => 'some@one',
);

Loading/saving the config file:

include 'config.php';  // Bring config into the current namespace
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {  // Update on POST
 $config['name'] = $_POST['name'];
 $config['email'] = $_POST['email'];
 file_put_contents('config.php', sprintf("<?php\n%s\n", var_export($config, true)));
}
print_r($config);

As with any user input you should be sure to filter the input against a whitelist to weed out dangerous data. For instance, preg_replace('/\W/', '', $_POST['name']) will remove unsafe data (non-word characters) from the user-supplied values.