Good PHP classes that manipulate .ini files

Question

I need to be able to edit .ini files (which I'm reading with parse_ini_file), but in such a way that comments and formatting (line breaks, indenting) is preserved.

Do you know any good classes that have nice and optimized functions for this kind of stuff?

It looks like a standard ini file, like php.ini, 4-5 sections with some key = value entries inside them — Alex, Mar 07 '12 at 01:00
Doubt something like this exists meanwhile (for PHP). I would have a [`editconfigini.php`](http://apt.include-once.org/php/), but that ignores sections and only cares about a constrained key=value format. — mario, Mar 07 '12 at 01:05
@mario - something does exist that does this. Symfony uses ini files for example. — Flukey, Mar 11 '12 at 16:31
@Flukey - which version of Symfony do you have in mind, out of interest? Version 1.x uses ini files predominantly for Propel (db configuration goes in propel.ini) but that's only a config reader, not a writer afaik. I guess it would be using Phing for this - though that might have a writer in it! — halfer, Mar 11 '12 at 16:37
On using Phing to create template-based .ini files, [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/6675598/472495) might be of interest. That said, I find Phing to be a huge and rather daunting library for this relatively trivial task. — halfer, Mar 11 '12 at 21:56

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 11 '12 at 16:27

5

I've not used the config writer in the Zend component framework, but I've used the config reader, and it was very reliable. Would certainly be worth a go.

answered Mar 11 '12 at 16:27

halfer

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I tried it and it's really cool, but the writer will not preserve comments, it will just generate a new ini structure :( – Alex Mar 11 '12 at 18:27
If that's the only issue, you could perhaps hack that feature in? Of course it would be great if such a change could find its way back to the open source version - if only so you can take advantage of their upgrades - but I guess it depends on what Zend's policy is regarding feature/api stability. – halfer Mar 11 '12 at 19:08
Or, you could subclass the Zend writer class with your own class, containing the commenting changes. – halfer Mar 11 '12 at 21:54

Martin · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-14T20:40:44.400

You could try starting from this, it reads the ini file, and preserves the settings on write, you would have to extend it to support adding new entries:

class ini {
    protected $lines;

    public function read($file) {
        $this->lines = array();

        $section = '';

        foreach(file($file) as $line) {
            // comment or whitespace
            if(preg_match('/^\s*(;.*)?$/', $line)) {
                $this->lines[] = array('type' => 'comment', 'data' => $line);
            // section
            } elseif(preg_match('/\[(.*)\]/', $line, $match)) {
                $section = $match[1];
                $this->lines[] = array('type' => 'section', 'data' => $line, 'section' => $section);
            // entry
            } elseif(preg_match('/^\s*(.*?)\s*=\s*(.*?)\s*$/', $line, $match)) {
                $this->lines[] = array('type' => 'entry', 'data' => $line, 'section' => $section, 'key' => $match[1], 'value' => $match[2]);
            }
        }
    }

    public function get($section, $key) {
        foreach($this->lines as $line) {
            if($line['type'] != 'entry') continue;
            if($line['section'] != $section) continue;
            if($line['key'] != $key) continue;
            return $line['value'];
        }

        throw new Exception('Missing Section or Key');
    }

    public function set($section, $key, $value) {
        foreach($this->lines as &$line) {
            if($line['type'] != 'entry') continue;
            if($line['section'] != $section) continue;
            if($line['key'] != $key) continue;
            $line['value'] = $value;
            $line['data'] = $key . " = " . $value . "\r\n";
            return;
        }

        throw new Exception('Missing Section or Key');
    }

    public function write($file) {
        $fp = fopen($file, 'w');

        foreach($this->lines as $line) {
            fwrite($fp, $line['data']);
        }

        fclose($fp);
    }
}

$ini = new ini();
$ini->read("C:\\php.ini");
$ini->set('PHP', 'engine', 'Off');
echo $ini->get('PHP', 'engine');
$ini->write("C:\\php.ini");

thank you. do you know how can I make the comment/whitespace regex include new lines too (like empty new lines)? — Alex, Mar 14 '12 at 20:27
ps: I'm using your regex to "record" only extra data like comments, which I then prepend to the configuration generated by the zend config class, which is so cool :) — Alex, Mar 14 '12 at 20:30
@Alex: I forgot a question mark in my comment regex, which should make the "colon followed by anything" optional. How does that work? — Martin, Mar 14 '12 at 20:41

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 11 '12 at 16:23

2

Here's a few you might want to try out:

http://www.phpclasses.org/package/3089-PHP-Manipulate-configuration-files-in-the-ini-format.html

http://www.phpclasses.org/package/6545-PHP-Read-and-write-configuration-values-to-INI-files.html

answered Mar 11 '12 at 16:23

Steven De Groote

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 13 '12 at 12:09

2

The PEAR::Config package has support for comments, so I assume it does preserve them. Probably it is fitting your needs.

answered Mar 13 '12 at 12:09

hakre

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Good PHP classes that manipulate .ini files

4 Answers4