Parsing an "advanced" INI file with PHP

Basically, I would like a simple, easy, one-file way to parse an INI file with "advanced" features, like section inheritance and property nesting, like Zend_Config_Ini.

For example:

[foo]
a = 1
b.a = 2
b.b = 3
b.c = 4
c = 5

[bar : foo]
b.b = 17
c = 42

Would parse into

array(
  'foo'=>array(
    'a'=>'1',
    'b'=>array(
      'a'=>'2',
      'b'=>'3',
      'c'=>'4'
    ),
    'c'=>'5'
  ),
  'bar'=>array(
    'a'=>'1',
    'b'=>array(
      'a'=>'2',
      'b'=>'17',
      'c'=>'4'
    ),
    'c'=>'42'
  )
)

PHP's built-in parse_ini_file, doesn't handle anything other than simple INI's with simple sections and simple keys.

My problem with using Zend_Config_Ini is that I would have to include virtually the whole Zend_Config subpackage, and is super-bloated and configurable.

Is there a small and simple library available to parse this?
If not, is there an easy implementation I'm not seeing?

By small and simple, I mean something like the sfYaml of INI files.

To my (very inexperienced) eyes, I would have to parse through once with parse_ini_file, then come back and resolve inheritance, then run through each section and expand the keys recursively...

UPDATE: Since this seems to be a popular question, I would like to note that I have a simple class implementing this on GitHub, feel free to send pull requests, issues, etc.

php parsing ini

Edit Report

I've wrote something like this and for now it's working ok for me:

        $config = array();
        $configSrc = parse_ini_file( $filePath, true );
        foreach( $configSrc as $sectionName => $section )
        {
            $config[$sectionName] = array();
            foreach( $section as $itemName => $item )
            {
                $itemNameArray = explode( '.', $itemName );
                eval( sprintf('$config[$sectionName][\'%s\'] = $item;', join("']['", $itemNameArray)) );
            }
        }

        // marge inheritance;
        foreach( $config as $sectionName => $section )
        {
            $ancestryArray = explode( ':', $sectionName );
            $ancestryCount = count( $ancestryArray );
            if( $ancestryCount > 1 )
            { //
                $config[$sectionNameTrimmed = trim($ancestryArray[0])] = array();
                $ancestryArray = array_reverse( array_slice($ancestryArray, 1) );
                foreach( $ancestryArray as $ancestryName )
                {
                    $ancestryName = trim( $ancestryName );
                    if( isset($config[$ancestryName]) ) {
                        $config[$sectionNameTrimmed] = array_replace_recursive( $config[$sectionNameTrimmed], $config[$ancestryName] );
                    }
                }

                $config[$sectionNameTrimmed] = array_replace_recursive( $config[$sectionNameTrimmed], $section );
                unset( $config[$sectionName] );
            }

        }

answered 2013-06-15T07:09:02.113

Parsing an "advanced" INI file with PHP

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