it is just a key value setter. The important question is which values can be set. Below you find a list of working examples. Please note that you cannot change all php.ini options especially those that need to be set before PHP initializes.
Useful Working ini_set() Examples
1. Enabling error display
On production sites you typically do not show errors in the page for usability and security reasons. But when you when you debug something live you might want to enable it temporarily and just for you:
# Assuming 5.44.33.22 is your IP...
if ( $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] == "5.44.33.22") {
ini_set('display_errors', '1');
}
Note: you may want to combine this with
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
2. Changing Memory Limit
When you need to increase memory from within the code:
ini_set("memory_limit","1000M");
Note though that this might be prevent by a Suhosin hardended PHP installation.
3. Adding include paths
Normally this shouldn't be necessary. It is way cleaner to do it in php.ini, but if you bundle libraries and you administrator doesn't know:
For most php.ini settings you can't use ini_set(). To workaround consider deploying a .htaccess along with your code as this .htaccess can provide all PHP options to overwrite the default php.ini settings. For example to change the HTTP POST limit add this line to a .htaccess read by your webserver:
php_value post_max_size 2500000
Note how the "php_value" prefix indicates settings for PHP. So simple syntax is