PHP and Boolean Settings

Retrieving settings from PHP’s configuration seems straightforward at first sight:

<?php

if (ini_get('safe_mode') == false) {
     echo "Safe mode disabled\n";
}

Sadly, it is not as easy as it should, because:

If the setting is defined in php.ini, an empty string is returned when disabled, 1 is if enabled, simple, right?
If the setting is defined somewhere else, say in httpd.conf, the exact string is returned, WTF?!

The correct way to do it becomes:

<?php

function ini_get_boolean($setting)
{
       $my_boolean = ini_get($setting);
 
       if ( (int) $my_boolean > 0 )
             $my_boolean = true;
       else
       {
             $my_lowered_boolean = strtolower($my_boolean);
 
             if ($my_lowered_boolean === "true" ||
		 $my_lowered_boolean === "on" ||
		 $my_lowered_boolean === "yes") {
               $my_boolean = true;
             } else {
               $my_boolean = false;
	     }
       }
 
       return $my_boolean;
}
 
if (ini_get_boolean('safe_mode') === false) {
     echo "Safe mode disabled\n";
}

I can’t remember how much time I wasted trying to debug code in some external library because of this. See also: