How to use different php.ini files for different VirtualHosts?

Question

I have my site and it's staging subdomain running on the same CentOS machine running apache. The subdomain is created using a VirtualHost, and I use it to find any bugs before I push to production. I want the php.ini file for the staging VirtualHost to be a development one, and the production site will use a production php.ini. How can I configure apache to use different php.ini files? I don't want to use php_value/php_flag for everything, I'd rather just use the php.ini file I already have available. I've tried creating an .htaccess file that looks like this,

SetEnv PHPRC /path/to/php.ini/directory

This has no effect, as phpinfo() tells me it's still using /etc/php.ini. I've also tried setting PHPIniDir for both virtual hosts (www and staging) and it complains about seeing the directive twice.

Answer 1

Actually, it is impossible to specify different php.ini files for each virtual host.

However you can change almost anything in the php.ini file by using the ini_set() function:

• It allows you to set the value of a given configuration option. The configuration option will keep this new value during the script's execution, and will be restored at the script's ending.
• Not all the available options can be changed using ini_set(). There is a list of all available options here. Thus, all directives having the "PHP_INI_USER" mode can be changed during runtime by using the ini_set() function.