PHP analog to ASP.NET's web.config

Which is the best, official and/or "blessed" way to implement something akin to ASP.NET's web.config in PHP开发者_Go百科? Take into consideration that these configuration file(s) will have to be read by several PHP files located in possibly different folders.

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If you're interested in parsing configuration files, there is a Zend Framework class called Zend_Config that will handle the translation of INI, XML, Yaml or JSON files into an associative array for your application.

Like many Zend Framework classes, it works by itself, so you can use it without having to adopt the whole framework.