Question

I have settings.php file that I want to keep some constants in, like my db connect info.

What I want to accomplish, but for the life of me, I can’t figure how to do it is … I don’t want every constant in my settings.php globally available. I’m using an MVC setup and for example I don’t my my db connection info available in my controller.

My question is, how do I setup a settings file like this:

class Settings {

  const HOST = 'localhost';

  ....

  const DEBUG = true;
}

then load it into my application so that my db connection constants are encapsulated into just my Model class and so on.

I’m sure I am not explaining this the best I could be, but basically I want to A: have one central location for all of settings and B: make it so that I can control access to those settings throughout my application so that they are not all globally available.

The problem I have run into is that if I include the settings.php file in my parent class then all of the classes that inherent from it also have access to settings.php.

Answer 1

Wrap them in a function and call it, e.g.

function init() {
    $model = new Model;
    $model->setConfigurationValue('name', 'value);
    // etc ...
}
init();

This way nothing is global.

Personally, I use the symfony components YAML library to store my configuration in YAML files which get automatically loaded into a singleton Configuration object, which allows access from everywhere but prevents the state from changing. Easy to change config without messing with code, and I use multiple YAML files so that my DEV environment adds extra config etc.