An alternative to _ss_environment Files for easy 'Per Environment' Configuration

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9 June 2011 | Pete Bacon Darwin | SiteConfig, Database, Installing | Supports v2.4, v2.3

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Although Silverstripe has a mechanism for alternative configuration per environment, using the ConfigureFromEnv() method in your mysite/_config.php file, it has its limitations and I have often read people complaining about it. Here is a simple yet powerful alternative to using SilverStripe environment files.

You can read more about the 'Official' method here: http://doc.silverstripe.org/sapphire/en/topics/environment-management.

Instead of using that method, I have found it useful to add the following line to the bottom of /mysite/_config.php file instead:

@include '_live-config.php';

This attempts to include the _live-settings.php file and fails silently if it is not there.  In the development environment we just ignore this file and everything is configured as normal in the _config.php file.

On the live machine we add this new file to mysite/ and in it we can override any of the settings in the standard _config.php file.  In particular you can do things like provide live database connection values, override the mailer and email addresses, modify caching and so on. Your _live-config.php might look something like this:

<?php
 
$databaseConfig = array(
    "type" => "MySQLDatabase",
    "server" => "localhost", 
    "username" => "username", 
    "password" => "Password", 
    "database" => "database_live",
);
 
Security::setDefaultAdmin('admin','ABetterPassword');

This method gives us a very simple but highly expressive environment specific configuration.  What is more, since we don't have any of the live database settings in our _config.php we don't have to worry about storing it in a configuration management system like Subversion or Git since our sensitive data is only stored on the live server.