How to: Support multiple production environments in CodeIgniter

To get this working is very easy. Constants can be seen all the way through CodeIgniter and can be set almost anywhere. To keep things neat and logical we will put this code into application/config/constants.php.

For a simple 2 environment switch you can use the following:

define('ENV', strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'], 'local') !== FALSE ? 'local' : 'live');

Or if you have more than the two environments:

if(strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'], 'local') !== FALSE) { 
  define('ENV', 'local');
} elseif(strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'], 'dev.') === 0) { 
  define('ENV', 'dev');
} elseif(strpos($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'], 'qa.') === 0) {
  define('ENV', 'qa');
} else { 
  define('ENV', 'live');
}

That will match:

• http://localhost/ = local
• http://local.example.com/ = local
• http://dev.example.com/ = dev
• http://qa.example.com/ = qa
• http://example.com/ = live

Now you can base your config on if (ENV == 'live'). This is helpful for setting the $active_group in database.php, running caching for live only, displaying profiler and debug data for local/dev only and plenty more.