Auto detect internal/external development environment

Question

We use the following function to auto detect if we are on a machine internally or on a live server and then choose the appropriate configs for various components:

Answer 1

Set an environment variable in your Apache virtual host configuration. This is the way the Zend Framework does it.

See the ZF quick start guide for an example (the "Create a Virtual Host" section.)

In your httpd.conf or a .htaccess file, put:

SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV "development"

Then in your application, use the getenv function to get the value:

$environment = getenv("APPLICATION_ENV");
if ($environment == "development")
{
    // do development stuff
}
else if ($environment == "live")
{
    // do live stuff
}