In this new post to his blog today Brandon Savage looks at configuration options for PHP apps and gives some examples to help you get the thought process started for your development.

One of the decisions that has to be made each time an application is written for distribution is how best to set up the configuration files. There are a number of different approaches taken to this: some opt to use the define() function and define constants, while others use large arrays.

He points out a few "overlooked options" that some developers might no consider when working with configuration files like class constants and ini files (which PHP can parse natively). A few code snippets are included to show examples of them in use.