including code in a php configuration file

Question

The ability to have closures is pretty new, so I'm not sure if there is a "standard way" to do this yet but...

Is there a good way to include a function in a PHP configuration file? Right now, the project I'm working on uses JSON for the configuration files, but I can't see any way to include PHP functions in it.

I'd like to be able to do something like this (using JSON syntax)

conf file:

{
    myFunc: function($arg) {
        return $arg . ' is an argument';
    }
}

application:

json_with_func_literal_decode(...);

It doesn't have to use JSON syntax, although that'd be nice. Speed is not really a concern as long as it's reasonable. I would like to avoid the use of eval(), which is the obvious solution to this problem.

I've wrestled with this issue and IMHO closure is something that's best left out of the actual config files. In fact, I think your configuration directives should only contain primitive strings/ints/floats. It's trendy to use new language features like lambda's to accomplish simple tasks but things like your application configuration will be more portable (and readable) if you stick to the basics (e.g. string class names). When you use features that can only be implemented by a PHP config file you eliminate the ability to store your directives in YAML/XML/JSON etc. — user895378
– user895378, Commented Feb 19, 2012 at 17:57

Vitamin · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-19 17:26:27Z

3

You could simply use a PHP file without the overhead of parsing JSON/YAML for configuration like so:

<?php
return array(
    'foo' => 'bar',
    'myFunc' => function()
    {
        // ...
    }
);

And retrieve the configuration like so:

$config = include 'config.php';

answered Feb 19, 2012 at 17:26

Vitamin

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2 Comments

Aaron Yodaiken Over a year ago

Would you explain how that return works exactly? But otherwise, that's really cool.

Vitamin Over a year ago

"Return [...] if the current script file was include()ed, then the value given to return() will be returned as the value of the include() call" - php.net/manual/en/function.return.php

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