Constant support for Zend_Config_Xml

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Today I added support for constants in Zend_Config_Xml. This new feature will be available in Zend Framework 1.9. It was added via a Zend_Config_Xml specific XML namespace. To give you an easy example of how that may work:

<config xmlns:zf="http://framework.zend.com/xml/zend-config-xml/1.0/">
    <production>
        <includePath><zf:const zf:name="APPLICATION_PATH"/>/library</includePath>
    </production>
</config>

On PHP side, it works like usual:

<?php
define('APPLICATION_PATH', dirname(__FILE__));
$config = new Zend_Config_Xml($xmlString, 'production');

echo $config->includePath; // Prints "/var/www/something/library"

Additionally, the "extends" attribute was also moved to this new namespace, making the NULL namespaced extends attribute deprecated until ZF 2.0, when it will be removed.

Comments to this article

Reply Ralf Eggert Wednesday, July 22, 2009 8:16 AM

Nice one! Does this also work for class constants like Foo::BAR?
Reply Ben Scholzen 'DASPRiD' Wednesday, July 22, 2009 9:03 AM

Nope, that only works for usual PHP constants, as in .ini config files.
Reply Muhammad Thursday, September 3, 2009 2:39 PM

thank ben. it's usefull method.
Reply Muhammad Sunday, November 29, 2009 5:11 PM

It's good tools. but for first code of bootstrap not good because XML file have so time for pars and need cache before use.
But this way is useful.
- Reply René Pardon Saturday, May 29, 2010 5:53 PM
  
  I think it depends on your config file. If you have a large one it will take a long time to parse.
  
  I like this feature - constant support within xml files. Really awesome!
Reply James Zimmerman II Friday, August 27, 2010 11:54 PM

I just found this announcement but I've been an avid user of the XML format. Thank you so much for the constant addition, I really only use it for APPLICATION_PATH, but was really glad to see it added.