php.ini overwrite from project.ini file

Question

Is it possible to separate my changes to the php.ini into a different file, which overwrite the default settings.

E.g in my project.ini I wanted to overwrite the maxlifetime?

; Overwrite PHP settings required for Project

[Session]
; After this number of seconds, stored data will be seen as 'garbage' and
; cleaned up by the garbage collection process.
; http://php.net/session.gc-maxlifetime
session.gc_maxlifetime = 86400

I have seen some open source websites are packages with the php.ini inside. Is this a better approach?

Answer 1

You can set php.ini values manually in php with ini_set which overwrites the default values. Put this line at the top of every page (before session_start) or put it in a php file which is included everytime:

ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime', 86400);

Check this page for more Information: PHP: ini_set - Manual

Additionally you can override ini values by using

php_value session.gc_maxlifetime 86400

in a .htaccess file which is described here: PHP: How to change configuration settings - Manual