How to read dot files with PHP?

Yes, there is! Some frameworks like Laravel and Symfony have .env file support out of the box.

In your project, you could use vlucas/phpdotenv, which does exactly what you want and it's pretty simple to implement, check it out:

1 - Install it using Composer by typing the following command on your terminal:

composer require vlucas/phpdotenv

2 - Now let's configure it on your application's starting point (I'll assume it is index.php):

<?php
// index.php

include 'vendor/autoload.php';

$dotenv = new Dotenv\Dotenv(__DIR__);
$dotenv->load();

// your code goes here...

3 - Cool, we're almost there! Now create the .env file at your project's root directory and populate it with your configs like this:

DB_USER="user"
DB_PASSWORD="ultraSecurePassword"
DB_NAME="awesome_db"
FOO="bar"

4 - Finally, to retrieve the env values:

<?php
// db.php (naming things is hard)

$user = env('DB_USER');
// OR
$user = getenv('DB_USER');
// OR
$user = $_ENV['DB_USER'];
// OR EVEN
$user = $_SERVER['DB_USER'];

Hope it helps! ;)
(if there's any typo, feel free to correct me, i'll appreciate)

.htconfig.ini

[MySQL]
dsn = "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=myDatabase"
user = "username"
password = "Password"

index.php

<?php
$config = parse_ini_file('.htconfig.ini' , true);
$db = new MyPDO($config['MySQL']);

Don't forget add to .gitignore(if you use git) this dot files !