| ############################## |
| Handling Multiple Environments |
| ############################## |
| |
| Developers often desire different system behavior depending on whether |
| an application is running in a development or production environment. |
| For example, verbose error output is something that would be useful |
| while developing an application, but it may also pose a security issue |
| when "live". |
| |
| The ENVIRONMENT Constant |
| ======================== |
| |
| By default, CodeIgniter comes with the environment constant set to |
| 'development'. At the top of index.php, you will see:: |
| |
| define('ENVIRONMENT', 'development'); |
| |
| In addition to affecting some basic framework behavior (see the next |
| section), you may use this constant in your own development to |
| differentiate between which environment you are running in. |
| |
| Effects On Default Framework Behavior |
| ===================================== |
| |
| There are some places in the CodeIgniter system where the ENVIRONMENT |
| constant is used. This section describes how default framework behavior |
| is affected. |
| |
| Error Reporting |
| --------------- |
| |
| Setting the ENVIRONMENT constant to a value of 'development' will cause |
| all PHP errors to be rendered to the browser when they occur. |
| Conversely, setting the constant to 'production' will disable all error |
| output. Disabling error reporting in production is a :doc:`good security |
| practice <security>`. |
| |
| Configuration Files |
| ------------------- |
| |
| Optionally, you can have CodeIgniter load environment-specific |
| configuration files. This may be useful for managing things like |
| differing API keys across multiple environments. This is described in |
| more detail in the environment section of the `Config |
| Class <../libraries/config.html#environments>`_ documentation. |