Question

Is there any special function to parse a .conf file in php like parse_ini_file() function? If not how can I achieve that? Thanks!

EDIT :

Conf’s like httpd.conf(Apache). (I want to read and edit httpd.conf file)

Answer 1

No, there is no special function to parse httpd.conf, but a parser should be easy to write. For example, if you’re only interested in the key-value settings, like ServerRoot /var/www, then this will do the trick:

<?php

define('HTTPD_CONF', '/tmp/httpd.conf');

$lines = file(HTTPD_CONF);
$config = array();

foreach ($lines as $l) {
    preg_match("/^(?P<key>\w+)\s+(?P<value>.*)/", $l, $matches);
    if (isset($matches['key'])) {
        $config[$matches['key']] = $matches['value'];
    }
}

var_dump($config);

If you want to parse the <Directory ...> and other blocks, it’ll take you a few more lines of code, but it shouldn’t be too taxing. It really depends on what you want to do. You can get a lot of info from $_SERVER and getenv(), so you might not need to parse a config file.

EDIT

In response to your update, for editing httpd.conf, you’ll need to run your script with superuser privileges and cause httpd.conf to be reloaded (e.g., system("apachectl graceful");).