php includes & relative links

[john2k]

I'm trying to setup php includes to add in a header file throughout an entire website, but I'm having a problem with it.

domain.com/index.php works fine using an include of the following format:

<?php include("./ssi/include.htm") ?>

But, the same include code will not work from pages in directories other than the root directory of the site. For example, domain.com/directory/index.php will not include the file in the above code.

Using the default includes directory setting in php.ini isn't an option for me.

I need to be able to include the files in a way relative to the root of the website & not using the actual system path.

I can do this without any problem using regular server side includes, but cannot seem to figure out how to do it using php includes.

Thanks in advance for any help.

• John

[john2k]

So, as it stands now -

This works when used in pages located in the website root directory:

<?php include("./ssi/include.htm"); ?>

And this works when used in 1 directory deep:

<?php include("../ssi/include.htm"); ?>

Does anyone know what would work from any page on the domain?

I'm looking for something that does the following, but using PHP:

<!--#include file="/ssi/include.htm"-->

Thanks

[amchargue]

The way I've solved this problem in the past is to set a global variable equal to the include path.

Actually there may be a PHP variable called include_path that you can set ? hmm. See the comments under the include function in the php manual at http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php

[john2k]

The global variable sounds like a good idea, I'll try that. I read about the php.ini setting, but can't use that method since each of my domains uses a domain.com/ssi directory for the include files.

Thanks for the info.

[amchargue]

Many variables in php.ini can also be set within PHP by using the ini_set() function.

Taken from modwest.com (via google)--

Use the function ini_set(). For example if you wanted to set your PHP include_path to ".:../:./include:../include" then you would do this in your PHP code:

ini_set("include_path", ".:../:./include:../include");
You can also use ini_set() to affect other PHP settings like auto_prepend_file, auto_append_file, error_reporting, etc.