directory problem with php include

[paddyfields]

Hi there.

I may be missing a trick here, but when using an include for my header.php I'm getting some problems with directory folders.

The problem happens when my current page isn't on the same level as the one I'm linking to, for example my 'gallery.php' is in a sub directory called 'gallery', but when I try to link to 'home.php' from this page, it looks for 'gallery/home.php'.

I know I can get around this by linking to "../home.php" but as i'm using an include for my header.php then this doesn't work, as I need to link to "home.php" on other pages higher in the directory tree.

Is there a novel way around this?

header.php

<div id="header-links" class="header-links">
	<ul class="inline">
		<li><a href="landing.php">new search</a></li>
		<li><a href="gallery/gallery.php">gallery</a></li>
		<li><a href="venues.php">venues</a></li>
	</ul>
</div>

[Fou-Lu]

Yep, this is per normal.
PHP's cwd comes from the executing script, not from the script requesting an inclusion. As you start stacking inclusions, than the filepaths no longer match up.
The answer is to always use relative from THIS script (the one calling the include). I don't recommend absolute paths as if you distribute the software that creates a little bit of a mess unless you want to precalculate everything or ask for explicit configurations, and I don't recommend pulling from $_SERVER since that then locks you into a web environment. So to include a path from above *this* script would be a simple:

PHP Code:

require_once __DIR__ . '/../home.php'; 


Now if this script is included into /index.php for example and called with /subdir/thatscript.php, than /subdir/thatscript.php will resolve /subdir/../home.php as the path to include.

Simply prefixing with __DIR__ and working relative from this file's path eliminates the concern with inclusion depths and where the inclusion is called.

[paddyfields]

Thanks a lot for your help Fou-Lu, but after playing around with your answer I'm still quite confused.

Say my include is this;

header.php

<ul class="inline">
	<li><a href="landing.php">new search</a></li>
	<li><a href="gallery/gallery.php">gallery</a></li>
</ul>

And my page I want to include it on is this;

gallery/gallery.php

<div id="container">
 	<?php require_once __DIR__ . '/../header.php'; ?>
 	<p>more page content</p>
</div>

I'm still getting a file path of 'gallery/gallery/gallery.php' if I'm on that page. This will however work perfectly when included on '(no subdir)/home.php'.

I realise that's because I'm not doing what you told me properly , but could you point me in the right direction?

[paddyfields]

I do appreciate you going to the effort of explaining in detail btw, I read through what you said about 10 times but it's just a bit over my head!

[Fou-Lu]

Ohhh wait I think you are looking at this: <li><a href="gallery/gallery.php">gallery</a></li>
That isn't the same as a PHP include. PHP has no control of this; it is a client specific operation. On the plus side, HTML is jailed to the public_html (or whatever it is configured as), so using /gallery/gallery.php would lock it into the site.com/gallery/gallery.php.
Using the base tag can also alter this. HTML links are always performed relative to the output as well, but it's not as much of a headache since it always considers the root as the site root and not filesystem root. Plus you cannot stack includes in the HTML world the same way you do in PHP.

[paddyfields]

I just added a '/' to the beginning of the link address and it's linking it from the localhost (exactly what i needed!)

So simple...

Thanks for your help.