Includes

Mirrorball

I have a script in A/ called A.php, which includes

include "B/B.php";

And B.php does the following:

include "BB.php";

On my server BB.php is in directory B and I can include it with no problem (PHP 4.2.2). But I have a website on a server that runs PHP 4.2.3 and I can't include BB.php because BB.php is not in directory A.

Does anyone know how can I change it?

dalecosp

Try absolute paths.../usr/local/www/a/a.php, etc.

HTH,

Mirrorball

I didn't want to use absolute paths...

kjpstudios

what about putting

include "B/BB.php";

jebster

Why not use the full url?

include "http://www.yoursite.com/path/to/file/bb.php";

Unless that doesn't work

dalecosp

Well, try a server var like docroot, etc., whatever PHP calls 'em. "Basedir" maybe?

Mirrorball

I didn't want to use an absolute path or $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']. If there's no other way, I will do it, but I'd really like to know what I would have to change to be able to use relative paths.

NoFear

well, to change to a lower directory, you use "..", then put a slash and the new folder's name.

For example:

../newfoldertree/image.gif

Would back you out of the folder you were in, then proceed forward to the newfoldertree directory, and look for image.gif there.

NoFear

also, I believe it's more desirable to use require_once("path"), instead of include. Not sure why, exactly, though. I think it has something to do with the page being loaded more than once in a script that you're including the new file in.

ednark

if you want to change your include path on the fly you can use the
[man]ini_get/man and [man]ini_set/man methods

here is a trick i've use

[edit]
sorry before editing i tried to use the basedir function instead of dirname, and bsaedir does not exist
[/edit]

<?php
    /// BASE_INCLUDE.PHP this file put in the base directory of your site
    ini_set( 'include_path', ini_get('include_path') .":". dirname(__FILE__)  );
?>

# SOME SCRIPT:
<?php
    require '../relative/path/to/bottom/directory/base_include.php';
?>

you need to know the relative path to this sites root, and now the script will take care of altering the inlude path to have that base directory... this may or may not be helpful to you depending on what you are trying to do

[edit]

the FILE points to the path of the actual file you are in ... not the top file including it... so this lets you program your includes around only knowing where your base directory is so you can throw the scripts between sites with different base paths and not need to make any changes

if you have access to the php.ini file in the first place you can get rid of the naughty relative call on each page by taking advantage of the auto_prepend option, and still reap the rewards if you have both systems set to use the same auot_prepend

ednark

[man]require_once[/man] internally keeps track of this script, and if you try and require_once the same path, it will simply not execute the second time.... this basically allows you to code first and ask questions later, it will catch you trying to include a library file twice and stop it

Mirrorball

ednark, thanks for your tip, it was very helpful.
Anyway it seems that no one knows why my scripts work on my server but not on my site's... 🙁

seby

you can use chdir(); to change directory and not use /full/path/to/file.

example, i usually do:

<?php

include("file.php");

 // other $vars

chdir("../B/");
include("BB.php");


 // maybe other stuff

chdir("../A/");
include("AA.php");

?>

jebster

Originally posted by Mirrorball
ednark, thanks for your tip, it was very helpful.
Anyway it seems that no one knows why my scripts work on my server but not on my site's... 🙁

Maybe the sever is confi. differently then yours! Have you asked your host how they have it set up?

juschillinnow

just for the heck of it, I've had to do it for some odd reason before...use ./ in front of the directory. Just try it and see what happens

such as:

include "./B/B.php";

ednark

'.' means the current directory

require('file.php') will search in all the places that are in your path for this file

require('./file.php') will search only the current directory

it should be noted that the first thing in the path is usually '.'

blockage

While browsing through this thread I came across this example in a post from ednark...

<?php
    /// BASE_INCLUDE.PHP this file put in the base directory of your site
    ini_set( 'include_path', ini_get('include_path') .":". basedir(__FILE__)  );
?>

# SOME SCRIPT:
<?php
    require '../relative/path/to/bottom/directory/base_include.php';
?>

Looks really useful but what is the basedir() function? The installation of php on my dev server (XP) dosen't recognise it and I can't find any mention of it in the manual.

ednark

DOH!!! sorry, you are absoutely right there is no such function...

i usually run any code before i post it... but this seemed too short to bother... and look what i get... what i meant was

[man]dirname/man

from the

[man]basename/man, [man]pathinfo/man, and [man]realpath/man suite of functions

i guess i was kinda mishmashing basename and dirname together