How to setup a Zend_Application with an application.ini and a user.ini

Question

I am using Zend_Application and it does not feel right that I am mixing in my application.ini both application and user configuration.

What I mean with this is the following. For example, my application needs some library classes in the namespace MyApp_ . So in application.ini I put autoloaderNamespaces[] = "MyApp_". This is pure application configuration, no-one except a programmer would change these. On the other hand I put there a database configuration, something that a SysAdmin would change.

My idea is that I would split options between an application.ini and an user.ini, where the options in user.ini take preference (so I can define standard values in application.ini).

Is this a good idea? How can I best implement this? The idea's I have are

• Extending Zend_Application to take multiple config files
• Making an init function in my Bootstrap loading the user.ini
• Parsing the config files in my index.php and pass these to Zend_Application (sounds ugly)

What shall I do? I would like to have the 'cleanest' solution, which is prepared for the future (newer ZF versions, and other developers working on the same app)

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with that, I do something similar. I suggest using your second choice. I just have an _initConfig() method that takes care of loading the user config using Zend_Config_Ini. I wouldn't extend Zend_App, that seems a bit much.

Edit:

In response to your comment, you would simply do:

$this->bootstrap('config');

Thus, to ensure config is loaded before DB, you'd have something like:

protected function _initConfig()
{
    $config = new Zend_Config_Ini('/path/to/user.ini');
    return $config;
}

protected function _initDb()
{
    $this->bootstrap('config');
    $config = $this->getResource('Config');

    /* ... */
}

There is no need to use Zend_Registry as anything returned by a Bootstrap _init method is accessible using getResource()

Answer 2

You can ensure an _initConfig() bootstrap method is invoked before others by specifying in your other bootstrap methods (that require the config object) something like:

$this->bootstrap('config');

A more complete example (context of a Bootstrap class):

protected function _initConfig() {
    $config = new Zend_Config_Ini('[filename]');
    Zend_Registry::set('config',$config);
}

protected function _initSomething() {
    $this->bootstrap('config');
    $config = Zend_Registry::get('config');
    // you can now do whatever you like with the $config object
}

Update:

As has now been mentioned in other answers, if the config is only required within the bootstrap, I would say to use the $this->getResource('Config') method. I use the registry so that config can be accessed easily in other parts of my application.

Answer 3

In a similar scenario, I saw that the application specific parameters can be provided programmatically when instantiating the application. This helped to place configuration related parameters within the config.ini

I did it actually this way:

inside the index.php to bootstap the application

     $application = new Zend_Application(APPLICATION_ENV, array(
                'resources' => array(
                   'FrontController' => array(
                       'controllerDirectory' => APPLICATION_PATH . '/main/controllers',
                    ),
                'layout' => array(
                    'layoutpath' => APPLICATION_PATH . "/layouts/scripts"
                    ),
                ),
            ));

and then inside the bootstrap parse the config.ini inidependently

    protected function _initConfigFile() {
        try {
            $configuration = new Zend_Config_Ini(
                APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/app.ini',
                APPLICATION_ENV );
            $registry->configuration = $configuration;
        } catch (Zend_Exception $zExp) {
            echo "Could not read application ini file (app.ini). "
                . " Please check that it exists and has the appropriate structure.\n";
            echo("\n");
            var_dump($zExp);
            exit(1);
        }
    }

inside the bootstrap

Answer 4

An configuration file can have the item 'config' which refers to another config file. Zend_Application will include this config file. The included config-file will have preference, and overwrite the keys already defined in the standard config-file.

Yesterday there was also started a thread on the Zend Framework mailing list

Examples

application.ini:

[production]
config = APPLICATION_PATH "/configs/config.ini"
resources.db.adapter = "Mysqli"
resources.db.host = "localhost"

config.ini:

[production]
resources.db.host = "mysql.server.com"
resources.db.username = "myuser"

public/index.php:

$application = new Zend_Application(
    APPLICATION_ENV,
    APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/application.ini'
);

Answer 5

I found a solution to this issue that may be new to framework version 1.10. When creating the Zend Application object, you can pass in 2 configuration file paths in the options array that get merged together:

$application = new Zend_Application( APPLICATION_ENV, array( 'config' => array(APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/application.ini',APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/user.ini'), ) );

Answer 6

you know this will merge as much inis as you want?

in application.ini

[production]
config[] = APPLICATION_PATH "/configs/dsn.ini"
config[] = APPLICATION_PATH "/configs/error.ini"
...