How to handle paths

chucklarge

Hi,
I am trying to make my pages more modular so i have set up my pages now with includes where i need pages with content that changes frequently, and i would like to only have to modify one page to change it.

example

somefile.htm

<? include("leftnav.php); ?>

<div class="main">
<p> some content</p>
</div>

<? include("rightnav.php"); ?>

</body>
</html>

leftnav.php

<div class="leftnav">
<a href="inside.php">Admin</a>
<a href="links/links.php">Links</a>
<a href="contact/index.php">Contact</a>
</div>

Ok, so the problem with this is the paths do not work if I start moving somefile.php around. What are good ways to handle this?
I guess i could make all paths absolute but is there a better way?

I have heard that some servers do not allow absolute paths in includes due to security reasons.

Thanks for your help.

kkobashi

Here's what I do on all my php files.

if (!defined(FILE)) {
define(FILE, 1);

$docRoot = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"];
require_once($docRoot . "/myInclude1.php");
require_once($docRoot . "/myInclude2.php");

// ... more php code ...

}

I avoid reentrancy problems by checking to see if FILE has been defined. If it hasn't I define it.

I use $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] to retrieve the physical path of the webserver's document root. On Microsoft IIS systems this is InetPub by default. On Apache systems this is htdocs.

I then require_once forming the full absolute path from document root to the file to be included. If you ever programmed in C/C++ before you will appreciate PHPs ability to form include file paths at runtime.

Thus, everything is based on the document root. If I move the file to another directory, then I simply update the require_once paths from inside the file being moved.