Best way to store a PHP App's Settings?

Question

What is the best approach to storing a group of global settings for a custom PHP application? I am working on a personal project (first major one really), and need a method

Answer 1

What has mentioned before, is true. I like the one more than the other, but I mostly use another way of storing my configuration.

I never use a database as the place to store my settings, because that would create a lot of data transfers, which can make the application a little more insecure- in my opinion. Besides, some application hosts (like Amazon's AWS and Google's Cloud Platform) limit the read/write actions to a database.

Therefore, I mostly use this method:

Firstly, I create a file config/settings.php with the following contents:

 [
        'host' => 'localhost',
        'port' => 3006,
        'user' => 'username',
        'password' => // your secret password
    ],
    'application' => [
        'name' => 'Your site\'s name',
        'version' => '1.0-dev'
    ]
]

When you want to use this in you index.php file, add the following line in it:

$config = include('./config/settings.php');

I hope this can add some information for you or others.