Re: Opendir on site root directory?

Stuart wrote:

2009/3/8 Clancy <clancy_1@cybec.com.au>

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 12:33:15 +0000, stuttle@gmail.com (Stuart) wrote:

2009/3/8 Clancy <clancy_1@cybec.com.au>

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 09:01:18 +0000, stuttle@gmail.com (Stuart) wrote:

2009/3/8 Clancy <clancy_1@cybec.com.au>

I want to index the files on a website recursively. The program will

run

in

the site root directory, which GETCWD reports as D:/Websites/Website_1. I can open

any

file in the root directory simply using its file name; Joe.dat, for example, and I can opendir for any subdirectory; eg

       opendir(Subdirectory_1);

but opendir () does not seem to work, and the only way I can find to

open

the root directory is to give its full path; eg

       opendir (D:/Websites/Website_1);

I have got the program working by using the full path to open the

root

directory, and then using relative paths to open the subdirectories and individual files,

but

this seems rather a kludge, and I am wondering if there is a way to open the

root

directory without specifying an absolute path?

The current working directory cannot be trusted to be "right". The best option is to use dirname(__FILE__) and add '/..' as many times as

needed

to

get from the current file to the document root you're after.

It has always worked for me. But then I never change directory. But

both

give a hardware dependent answer; echo '<p>Current directory is '.__FILE__.', CWD is '.getcwd().'</p>';

gives

Current directory is D:\Websites\Corybas\Cydaldev\Dev\Testbed_2.php, CWD

is

D:\Websites\Corybas.

Not sure what you mean by a hardware-dependent answer. The current working directory for any given script is determined by the web server and so it cannot be assumed to be the location of the current script. dirname(__FILE__) will give you the directory the current script is in.

I agree that 'hardware dependent' was not the right word, but what I meant was that if I am running the local version of my program getcwd() will return 'D:\Websites\Corybas', where as if I am running the remote version it will return 'home/Corybasftp/www'.

This should be irrelevant in your code, something you can achieve using dirname(__FILE__). My webpage is always launched by loading index.php from the root directory,

and I don't think I ever change the working directory, so although the code actually being executed at any given time is usually in a subdirectory, getcwd() will reliably return the (system dependent) long definition of the root directory.

Either I'm not explaining this well enough or you're just not getting it. Ignore the current working directory - it's not reliable. If every page is created by a single script then the solution is to define a constant at the top of that script that gives you the directory that script is in.... define('ROOT_DIR', dirname(__FILE__)); Then when you need to refer to another file in your directory structure you do so relative to the location of index.php. So if you have a directory named arse in the same folder as index.php you'd refer to that like so... ROOT_DIR.'/arse' If that's not clear maybe this will help: http://dev.stut.net/php/dirname.php

Based on that the following should work in your particular situation, but

rather than just using this I encourage you to understand why it works...

opendir(dirname(__FILE__).'/../Cydaldev');

Looking into this I did find that 'opendir('Albums/../');', where 'Albums' can be any subdirectory I know to be present, will reliably open the root directory.

You clearly haven't looked into this at all since you're still not using dirname(__FILE__), and if this email complete with the example script above doesn't get the point across I give up. Have you even looked up dirname in the manual? http://php.net/dirname As a result of what seems to me to be an oversight in the design of

opendir(), in that opendir(Fred) and opendir(Fred/Nurg) will open the appropriate sub directories but opendir() will not open the root directory, I can readily index all the subdirectories by giving their relative paths, but I have to resort to a kludge to index the root directory, and another kludge to eliminate this kludge from the index.

As in the example script I've posted above you can refer to the current working directory with a single period (.), but this is still relying on the current working directory being what you expect it to be.

If, as it seems, I have to accept this it is fairly immaterial which kludge I actually use.

There is no need to use a "kludge". I encourage you to read my replies carefully if you're still not getting it. -Stuart

lol stut! - just-in-case I'll add in that "__FILE__" is a magic php constant holding the path to the file it is used in, and not just stuarts way of saying "put your filename here" regards!