Easy Application Configuration With patConfiguration - Plug And Play (
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patConfiguration is a PHP-based tool designed, in the author's words,
to "access XML-based configuration files via PHP". Developed by Stephan Schmidt,
it is freely available for download and is packaged as a single PHP class which
can be easily included in your application.
Very simply, patConfiguration provides application developers with a set of APIs
that ease the task of reading, writing and maintaining application configuration
files. As a tool designed to assist in the manipulation of data, it fully supports
the XML data markup toolkit, and is capable of producing configuration files in
both XML and PHP format. It supports a variety of different data types for configuration
values, comes with the ability to link configuration variables together, and supports
caching of configuration data for better performance.
If you're in the business of building Web applications, and if those applications
require some amount of configuration to get up and running, you're going to find
patConfiguration invaluable to your development cycle. Written as a PHP class,
patConfiguration can easily be integrated into any PHP-based Web application,
and can substantially reduce the amount of time you spend manipulating application
configuration files and data. You'll find it functional, powerful and (if you're
the kind who likes fiddling) easily extensible, and it'll soon be a standard component
of every application you write.
Before proceeding further, you should visit the patConfiguration home page at
http://www.php-tools.de/and download a copy of the latest version (1.3 at the time of writing). The package
contains the main class file, documentation outlining the exposed methods and
variables, and some example scripts.
