There seem to be a lot of similar questions about this issue with no concise answers.
I have MySQL database that I need to connect to from several different PHP pages. In the past I have just included authentication information for the database in every PHP page, but this seems like a terrible day, both from a reusability perspective and from a security standpoint.
Where can I store credentials to my MySQL database so that I can refer to one location from several different php files to authenticate with the database?