Comments on: Don’t use YAML for PHP, use parse_ini_file

By: ananda

ananda — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:52:36 +0000

What about MVC ?

what when the data comes from a database instead of a file ????

By: Rob Desbois

Rob Desbois — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:06:47 +0000

As stated by ’she’ the ini file format doesn’t support anything more complicated than (name => value) pairs.

My application requires some data which is in a structured tree format - impossible to represent in an ini file. With YAML it’s easy.
Granted there are other formats which can support it - XML being the obvious one that springs to my mind, but I dislike the overheads of the structure and the unfriendliness to someone not well-versed in it. YAML is easy to read and easy to write whether you are man or machine, and whether you are a developer or not.

By: NOTini

NOTini — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:48:07 +0000

sometime I wanna define a dsl style config file. the ini file looks like an ugly guy.

it’s depends on the requirement. in my project, there are tons of config files with dsl style

so I have no choice.

By: Nick J

Nick J — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:12:43 +0000

One problem with parse_ini_file is backwards compatibility, because until at least March 2007 you could not escape quotes in INI files.

E.g. if you wanted to use an INI file to do this: $array[’x'] = ‘The message said "Hello World!"…’;
… then until just over a year ago, you could not do that due to a bug - i.e. an INI file like this:
————
x = "The message said \"Hello World!\"…"
————
… would not work with parse_ini_file. Not being able to have quotes in strings is a pretty fundamental limitation, so for apps that have to support PHP5.x, that rules out using parse_ini_file.

By: she

she — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:45:21 +0000

Is your comment correct?

Yaml can store hashes and arrays, I dont think .ini can do.

By: Clint

Clint — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:56:51 +0000

yaml is basically impossible to parse in bash. Its not easy in perl (but of course, doable). ini files, however, are dead simple to parse in bash and perl. When you have a heterogeneous environment, having one spot for local config information is a huge advantage.

By: nick

nick — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:18:29 +0000

This is being discussed here:

http://codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=126020