Is it common to have just a return statement in a php file

Question

Is it common to have just a return statement in a php file? If yes, can someone show me how this is used in other files?

<?php

return ['someVariable' => 'someValue'];

A perfect example is the config files in the Laravel framework, for instance the database.php.

Answer 1

No it isn't very common to have just a return statement, but it is used sometimes to store the configuration information in a separate config.php file so that the config can be included elsewhere with php require.

//config.php
<?php

return [
    'app_key' => 'SomeRandomString',
    'app_secret' => 'SomeRandomString',
]; 

---

// other-file.php
<?php

$config = require 'path/to/config.php';
$facebook = new Facebook($config['app_key'], $config['app_secret']);