unix directory navigation troubles

[aaron_karp]

Hey all - this probably won't be a difficult problem for you guys to solve, but I'm not that great with UNIX so I'm lost.

I want to include() a script that contains my database connection information in the header file that goes on every page of my site. So, something like this:

include("dbcnx.php");

Now, that file, dbcnx.php, happens to reside in a folder that's not in the public_html directory of my site (for security reasons). So, if the header file is immediately inside the public_html folder, I'd have to write something like this:

include("../includes/dbcnx.php");

The problem is that the site's directory structure is more complicated than that, and often the include() statement will appear somewhere like public_html/docs/forms/members.php

In that case, something like include("../includes/dbcnx.php"); wouldn't work. I guess I need something that has an absolute path reference. But using /../includes/dbcnx.php doesn't seem to work, and possibly it shouldn't.

Does that path even make sense? If not, how should I write the path so that I can access the includes folder from any page of the site?

Thanks! Hope this wasn't too confusing...

-Aaron

[drawmack]

place a file on your system, in public_html, that simply contains this

<?php
echo getcwd();
?>

That should output something like
/home/mydir/public_html

Then replace the public_html in this string with includes/dbcnx.php and you should have the absolute path to your includes file.

[aaron_karp]

Thanks. That looks like it should work.