Re: best way to properly build an include path *regardless* from where I am calling the include?

On Jul 6, 2009, at 9:24 AM, Daniel Brown wrote:

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:04, Govinda<govinda.webdnatalk@gmail.com> wrote:

Kim, this is exactly what I was looking for. I had been over $_SERVER in the docs.. but somehow missed that basic obvious param. Thanks!

And now I'll throw a monkey wrench into the gears and tell you that, yes, it works, but don't always rely on it. The path translated to/from the web server may not be the real path. And while you could do your translation with realpath(), instead you should look into:

       <?php include(dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/include/file.php'); ?>

The example above uses the always-on reserved constant __FILE__ for the file in which it's written, regardless of how it's accessed (as an include, etc.). So consider the following:

       /home/user/public_html/index.php
       /home/user/public_html/web/home.php
       /home/user/public_html/templates/body.tpl.php
       /home/user/public_html/include/file.php

In the example above, imagine that you access 'index.php', which includes 'home.php', which - in turn - includes 'body.tpl.php' and 'file.php'. Using $_SERVER data will use the information given to it by the webserver at the point of the call: in this case, from /home/user/public_html/index.php. As such, the include path will be relative to that. So if you're including a file in ./web/home.php, you will need to hard-code the adjustment to account for the difference. Conversely, using the code example from above (and building upon it), we know that __FILE__ remains static regardless of the point of the call. Thus, it's a better and more reliable method, and is usable even if $_SERVER data is not available to the script. With this in mind, it should be quite simple to understand how the following should work: <?php // My Name: /home/user/public_html/web/home.php $file_to_include = dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/include/file.php'; if(file_exists($file_to_include) && is_readable($file_to_include)) { include($file_to_include); } else { // Do your error handling here. } ?> .... but to each his/her own! ;-P

Michael and Dan this is great, but then I still do not have a solution that will work for any level deep of dir/ . I.e. this- dirname(dirname(__FILE__)) gives the correct first part of the path to document root like $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] does only when called from a file that is 2 levels deep. I want something that will work for calling an include from any file that lives n levels deep. Isn't there anything reliable that effectively says, "from document root"?? I do not really understand why $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] should return the right data at one time and not at another. (?) -- Also, what is the difference between a path that starts with "/", versus the same path but that does not have that leading "/", or that same path but prefixed with "./"? I.e., this: /somepath/includes/file.php versus this: somepath/includes/file.php versus this: ./somepath/includes/file.php ("../" I know) -G