How can the use of constants in a separate configuration file impact the connection to a database in PHP?

Using constants in a separate configuration file can make it easier to manage database connection details such as host, username, password, and database name. By defining these values as constants, you can easily update them in one central location without having to search through your codebase. This can improve security by keeping sensitive information out of your main code files and also make it simpler to connect to different databases in different environments (e.g., development, staging, production).

// config.php
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_USER', 'username');
define('DB_PASS', 'password');
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name');

// db_connection.php
require_once 'config.php';

$connection = new mysqli(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_NAME);

if ($connection->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $connection->connect_error);
}