Header / Footer Files

bstegman

I use header/footer files for my websites and have come up with various solutions to managing paths to images and such but was wondering what other people are doing.

The header file is included in all files but the file indluding the header might be in a different directory therefore one path is not valid for all files.

How are you handling this?

/images
/dir1
/dir2/dir3

all need access to images...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.....

theeper

You can either hardcode absolute paths in your includes like this
/var/www/images/

or use relative paths, depending on your setup.
../images/

bstegman

Thanks for your response, I def. don't want to hard code the path and ideally I would like to use relative paths but the problem is my path will vary depending on the file using it.

/images

/dir1/file.php - would require src="../images...." (in the header file)

/dir2/dir3/file.php - would require src="../../images...." (in the header file)

In the past I have used a variable called $doc_root to determine what is needed, but I don't know if this is the best approach.

frigidman

If the website hosting the /images directory is indeed at /images... ie:

http://some.website.dom/images

Then for all your image references, use simply "/images/image.gif".

I do this for ours on all our websites. Works out great, because you never know how deep it will be located with dynamic content. Also helps for making those custom 404 pages with images, because you never know WHERE someone will 404. Could be in the root level of the website, or it could be five levels down. But using src="/images/image.gif" works out great, as its always relative to the base URL domain for the website.

Now, if you are trying this under a ~ situation... ie:

http://some.website.dom/~johndoe/

This will not work. You have to use relatives, or use the evironment variables for the location of your document root for that website. Sometimes $_ENV["HOME"] works with the ~user based websites. Depends on configuration issues, could try it.

bstegman

Hey thanks I haven't tried the $_ENV["HOME"] yet. Tried DOCUMENT_ROOT and hmmm something else, can't remember right off hand.

Yeah, I always use the /images/img.gif for sites that I build on my servers but I am working on this project for a company that has an IT group and as you said they have a ~nameofcomp, vhosting it so /images/img.gif will not work. So I was just trying to get a feel for what others might be doing.

I really appreciate your help....