Re: Full versus relative URLs

On Mon, 2009-02-16 at 20:19 +0200, Thodoris wrote: > > On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 07:39:29PM +0200, Thodoris wrote: > > > > > >>> Here's a question related to my last post. When specifying a link in a > >>> HTML file (like to the css or an image file), there are two ways of > >>> doing it. One is to simply include the relative path to the file > >>> (relative to the doc root), like: > >>> > >>> /graphics/my_portrait.gif > >>> > >>> Or you can include the full URL, like: > >>> > >>> http://example.com/graphics/my_portrait.gif > >>> > >>> My casual observation seems to indicate that the former will load faster > >>> than the latter. But has anyone done any benchmarking on it? > >>> > >>> Paul > >>> > >>> > >>> > >> I am not aware if absolute URLs are faster or not (in case they are > >> there will be such a small difference you cannot probably notice) but > >> IMHO it is a bad practice to use full URLs. > >> > >> Basically because renaming directories or scripts will cause great pain > >> in the ass. > >> > >> Of course resources that are coming outside your own site are needed to > >> use absolute URLs and nobody is assuming that are useless. > >> > > > > Agreed. But here's the real reason, in my case. We develop the pages on > > an internal server, which has the URL > > http://pokey/mysite.com. When we > > move the pages to the live server at mysite.com, all the URLs would have > > to be rewritten. Ugh. > > > > Paul > > > > > > I sometimes use something like this in my scripts for every script to > determine itself: > > // Find what is the name of this script > $self = basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']); > > You can probably take advantage of the $_SERVER information so that you > don't need to rewrite every url you use. > > Hope that helps. > I know it's been said before, but beware of relying on this value just for the sole purpose of deciding where things are located, as without a bit of error checking on it, it can be used for injection attacks and what-not, although, sadly, I forget the exact post recently that had the link that explained this issue on PHP_SELF. Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk