Best Practices for creating a PHP INI/CONFIG file and keep it secure

Question

I always used a normal PHP file and just defined the variables in that file, but is this considered best practice?

Example:

Answer 1

It is quite safe and I don't think there is any best practice for constants, but I tend to gather them in a dedicated Constants class for readability:

class Constants {
    const DB_PASS = 'mypass';
}