Parsing a config file in php to variables

Couple of ways, depending on how you wish to store the config data. The fastest way is to store the data as an .ini file and parse it using PHP's built in parse_ini_file. You could also store the data in other formats such as XML and YAML, but I wouldn't recommend XML as you probably won't be transporting the data betweeen disparate systems, also XML tends to be harder to read with all the extraneous tags (vs yaml or ini).

I personally prefer yaml and use Symfony's Yaml Component parser which will parse the yaml file into an array. Symfony's Yaml Component can be used outside of the Symfony framework. You could also look into Zend's Yaml parser as well.

After you pick the format and parser you wish to use, it's as easy as storing the config file somewhere that is accessible by your webserver, requiring it, and passing it through the parser API. After it is parsed you should have access to the values via an array.

-- Update --

<?php

$settings = parse_ini_file('test.ini');

var_dump($settings);

Results:

array(41) {
["plugins"]=>
string(0) ""
["breadcrumb-navxt"]=>
string(5) "4.0.1"
["bp-moderation"]=>
string(5) "0.1.4"
["buddypress-activity-stream-hashtags"]=>
string(5) "0.4.0"
["buddypress-group-documents"]=>
string(5) "0.3.5"
["buddypress-group-email-subscription"]=>
string(5) "2.9.1"
["buddypress-links"]=>
string(3) "0.5"
["buddypress"]=>
string(6) "1.2.10"
["calendar"]=>
string(5) "1.3.1"
["collapsing-pages"]=>
string(5) "0.6.1"

This appears to work as expected, so if I want the version number of the calendar plug-in I would just do:

var_dump($settings['calendar']);

To store in dynamic variables:

$settings = parse_ini_file('test.ini');

foreach ($settings as $key => $setting) {
    // Notice the double $$, this tells php to create a variable with the same name as key
    $$key = $setting; 
}

var_dump($calendar);