PHP - Allow_url_fopen

Hello,

Am writing a script that is supposed to connect to a remote database without having the credentials (host, user & password) written in the code itself.
There are two ideas I picked up from the net and the first is to enable allow_url_fopen in the remote server's php.ini and then have a file with the database credentials that I can fopen with this script and read from it then connect to the database on that same server.

But am afraid this might be a security gap since anyone with that file's address will be able to read from it and connect to the database.
Is the allow_url_fopen method really secure?

The other means is CURL but I am not sure it will work well with my current structure.

Please advise me on the best means to connect to this database.

Thanks in advance.