$PHP_SELF for PHP scripts not in doc root

[ppowell]

Is there a way to get an equivalent of $PHP_SELF for a PHP script that is not residing in the document root? Apparently if you have PHP 4.3.2 and Apache 2.0 in Red Hat Linux 7.3, at the very least, $PHP_SELF is only populated with content indicating the location of the PHP script calling $PHP_SELF if that PHP script resides in Apache's document root or below.

But I have some PHP scripts that will be ultimately referenced via cron that have to reside outside of the document root. When I do

phpinfo();

I get "no value" for the variable $PHP_SELF. This tells me apparently that it can only identify itself from within the document root.

So this leaves me with a problem. How can I find $PHP_SELF, or something like $PHP_SELF, in a PHP script that's outside of the document root? I am looking for values within the path that I will need to dynamically populate portions of that same PHP script, otherwise, the user, upon inheriting these cron files, have to MANUALLY change values inside the PHP script every time!

Thanx
Phil

[tekky]

worst case... associate a DB table with the crons and just have it pull from that table based on webpage, IE, if their address is www.yoursite.com/~username/
associate the IDS with username
or however else your can uniquely identify each user....

(then again it sounds like you may need a page by page type thing....)

[ppowell]

That's an idea. However, you should know a "page by page type thing" would be useless in this case as the PHP scripts produce no pages of any kind; these are outside of the document root in /home/me/cron not in the document root of /var/www/html. But it gives me a start, though.

Phil

[tekky]

Originally posted by ppowell
That's an idea. However, you should know a "page by page type thing" would be useless in this case as the PHP scripts produce no pages of any kind; these are outside of the document root in /home/me/cron not in the document root of /var/www/html. But it gives me a start, though.

Phil

I was more inclined to think that these may have been crons for maintaining some page possibily :p

regardless, atleast you have an idea now 😉

[Sgarissta]

use the

__FILE__

constant. It is basically the equivelant of $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] but is availabe to the CLI as well as CGI versions of PHP.

[ppowell]

Thanx, however, that opened up a HUGE can of worms with my company and the client we're building this app for..

My company wants me to ensure that the application I built is thoroughly portable and scalable, of course, not unreasonable. Which means that all of the required code will be thoroughly portable from Client A thorugh Client Z and will work exactly the same for Client A through Client Z.

This means that it needs to globally include two library scripts I wrote: one (client_globals.inc.php) that will set all of the client-related global variables/functions/classes/stuff, and one (project_globals.inc.php) that will set all of the client-related-project-related global stuff specific to that client's project.

The code I wrote to do this is this and resides only in one file (index.php):

require(realpath($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/acme/acme_globals/client_globals.inc.php'));        // GET GLOBAL ACME - SCOPE ITEMS/CLASSES

 // GET PROJECT-SCOPE VARIABLES FOR I.C.

require(realpath("$DOCUMENT_ROOT/$clientFolderName/image_catalog/image_catalog_globals/project_globals.inc.php"));

Here's the problem. Suppose that my company wants to market this product out to another client, Foo Industries. That would mean that the folks that get my application will have to literally MANUALLY change the lines in index.php from 'acme' to 'foo' or whatever the folder name will be for that client. This is, of course, quite a major-league hassle to ask for. And frankly, I just can't think of any system I want to use that would be able to automate the process so that the code in index.php can remain fairly "static" and not needing to be physically altered from client to client.

If anyone can think of how I might be able to approach this, I'm all ears.

Thanx
Phil

[Sgarissta]

This probably doesn't solve your question much but here's something I've done in a similar situation that's worked pretty well for me.

We have 3 seperate environments that all of our scripts must run in (each with a different DB connection, and hostname of course). To ease the the transfer between servers I created a global configuration file on each server that resides outside of the doc root
(/www/somefolder/conf) to be exact. Along with the config file (an XML file) is a custom PHP class i whipped up that makes getting the values into each app on each server very easy.

The advantage to this is that I only have to mod one file, in one place per server, to make changes to any, or all of our apps.

That said, it does still require those two files to be in a very specific place (referenced now in all of our apps).

The only solution i can come up with would be to create a "setup" script to send out to anyone thats getting ahold of your code. The script could either a) place the files appropriately or b) let the user place the file, then mod the code appropriately.

That was probably of no use, but it's all i've got 🙂

[ppowell]

I probably WAY overcomplicated this, but it's the only thing my WAY overcomplicated mind could think of:

/*---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	'client_project_folder_info.csv' is a binary-based Text CSV file that must be found in the same directory
	as this script.  This CSV file will contain the necessary client and project folder names generated when
	the admin ran the installation script(s) in order to further run this script.  It should only run once as
	the client and project folder names will then be stored in $_SESSION variables
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
  if (!$_SESSION['clientFolderName'] || !$_SESSION['projectFolderName']) {
   if (!is_file('client_project_folder_info.csv')) die('Required file "client_project_folder_info.csv" not found');
   $fileID =  @fopen('client_project_folder_info.csv', 'rb');	// READ AS BINARY
   while (($data = @fgetcsv($fileID, 4096)) !== false) {
    $val = $data[0];
    ${$val} = $data[1];
    global ${$val};
   }
   @fclose($fileID);
   // STORE INTO SESSION VARIABLES TO PREVENT HAVING TO RETRIEVE FROM THE CSV FILE BUT ONLY ON THE FIRST VISIT INTO IVC OR SESSION EXPIRES
   $_SESSION['clientFolderName'] = $clientFolderName;
   $_SESSION['projectFolderName'] = $projectFolderName;
  } else {
   // BOTH SESSION VARIABLES EXIST - SET TO LOCAL VARIABLES
   list($clientFolderName, $projectFolderName) = array($_SESSION['clientFolderName'], $_SESSION['projectFolderName']);
  }
  //---END OF CSV GLOBAL VARS RETRIEVAL BLOCK----------------------------------------------------------------------

The CSV file is generated by an "install.php" that you run as command-line PHP with client folder name and project folder name as arguments. You then have to physically copy the CSV file over to the docroot where "index.php" is found.

Probably a much easier solution, but I will never figure it out other than this way. Only major problem is that the CSV file resides on the docroot with chmod 0644 since Apache needs to view it; which gives away sensitive client/project information out to the outside world.

Phil

[Sgarissta]

Since you're having them go through an install script, why not put it outside the doc root, with apache read permissions? Sure someone can still read it via a malicious script, but it prevents someone from stumbling across viewing it in a browser.

[maqmus]

The way I solve this is creating a file to store the path. I start with with an installer app that uses the following:

installer.php

$path = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'];
$path = str_replace("installer.php","",$path);

Then I save this into a configuration file, and use include($configuration) in the main script. This allows you to get the real path, no matter where you are.

[ppowell]

Could you please go over the steps more in detail? I am honestly not following this.

Phil

[maqmus]

installer.php

$path = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'];
$path = str_replace("installer.php","",$path);
$content = "<?php \\n";
$content .= "define(MY_PATH,$path);\\n";
$content .= "?>";
$conf = "configuration.php";
$fp = fopen($conf,"w+");
if(fputs($fp,$content)) {
fclose($fp);
echo "Path saved!"; }
else echo "ERROR!";

After this I have configuration.php with my fullpath, that could be something like (/local/usr/web/myscriptfolder/).

In your main script include("configuration.php");
and you may now use the constant MY_PATH .

[maqmus]

There should be a backslash before the n, but I cant get it to print it out.

[ppowell]

Wow, ok I did overcomplicate it, the solution was so simple it escaped me altogether.

Here is my install.php, I just run this from command line:

<?php

  /*----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    File: INSTALL.PHP
    Created: 5/18/2004
    Modified: 5/18/2004
    Purpose: This file will be housed in the /docs document folder for the IVC project documentation list and not kept inside the document
             root.  It will generate all necessary constants for use within the IVC by dynamically generating the necessary content from the
             $argv array values from user input and include them into script that will be placed into
             /[your document root]/[your client folder name]/[your project folder name]/include/constants.inc.php

Dependencies:
        Will be called via command-line PHP and can be set up as a cron, if so, move to /cron/[client folder name]/[project folder name].
        Takes four required parameters:

            1) client folder name
            2) project folder name
            3) your home directory path where this script resides
            4) the document root (e.g. "/var/www/html")

Cookies: NONE
Sessions: NONE
Privacy Scope: Command-line PHP and not meant to be viewable by web server
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
  if (!$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] && $_SERVER['PWD']) {
   $clientFolderName = $argv[1];
   $projectFolderName = $argv[2];
   $installHome = $argv[3];
   $docRoot = $argv[4];
   $includeCode = '<' . "?\n\n define('CLIENT_FOLDER_NAME', \"$clientFolderName\");\n define('PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME', \"$projectFolderName\");\n\n ?" . '>';
   $fileID = @fopen("$docRoot/$clientFolderName/$projectFolderName/include/constants.inc.php", 'w');
   @fputs($fileID, $includeCode); @fflush($fileID); @fclose($fileID);
  }
?>

Then once this runs it creates a PHP script within the docroot called "constants.inc.php" that is included by "index.php" to, you guessed it, define constants.

[from index.php:]

 /*---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This script will now look for a file called 'constants.inc.php' in the /include folder.  This script had to have
    already been generated by the user/admin running "install.php" from the command line.
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
  if (!defined('CLIENT_FOLDER_NAME') || !defined('PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME')) @include('./include/constants.inc.php');
  if (!defined('CLIENT_FOLDER_NAME') || !defined('PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME')) die('You must first run "install.php" from the command line - please see admin');
  // BOTH CONSTANTS EXIST AS SET BY install.php - SET TO LOCAL VARIABLES
  list($clientFolderName, $projectFolderName) = array(CLIENT_FOLDER_NAME, PROJECT_FOLDER_NAME);

  //---END OF CONSTANTS RETRIEVAL BLOCK--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

whew so simple it naturally escaped me. Thanx
Phil