devloping on local maching then going live

innovations

I have this problem...

If I use absolute urls in my application while I develop on my local, then when I upload my site to the server all of the absolute urls have to be changed.

What must I do to solve this problem?

Is there a conditional statement that I can write which will use one url path for my local machine and one url path for the remote? Of coarse, the conditional statement would have to check if the site is on my local machine or on the server, I guess using cgi variables or something.

Any help would be much appreciated! besides, this is PHPBuilder right?

thorpe

i store all my root directories in constants in a config file that i inlude in my application. thay way, if i have to move my application, i just go into the config file and change the roots.

of course you could then take that a step further and wrap your constant definitions in an if statement that made descisions based on weather the site is local or live.

innovations

thorpe

That is exactly what I was hoping for.

I know a little about php_prepend or auto_prepend or whatever it is called.

How can I wrap my variables in an if statement that checks if the url includes http://localhost/ or http://hourofthewitch.com/ ?

If there is another way of checking if it is local besides using cgi script to see if the url includes certain values than I would be very happy to learn about it.

innovations

Using a condition would be the ideal solution.

For now, I am going to put one file on the remote with the respective values and one file on the local machine with respective values. That way I do not have to change the values each time I upload a file.

robert_w_ark

In your config page you could always define constants such as:

define("ROOT_URL", "http://www.yoursitebase.com/", true);

The first argument is the variable name, the second argument is the variable value, and the third arguement is the case insensitive boolean. - To do this, you can always use this for your links.

<a href="<?php echo ROOT_URL; ?>somelink.php">Some Link</a>

And so on for the other links.. This also will work:

<a href="<?php echo root_url; ?>somelink.php">Some Link</a>

As the case insensitive boolean is on.

Then when you're ready to deply site, just change the constant. Hopefully this helps. -Rob

innovations

Thanks,

That is a neat little peace of code. I could see where it would come in handy. In this application however, I think it would give me the same result.

One thing... when using the define() function, I do not have to use a '$' sign when referencing the variable?

Drakla

nope, no need for the $ on a defined constant - but remember they ARE constant, and you can't just change them willy nilly - and the GREAT thing about them is they're also superglobal, meaning you can refer to them in functions without having to declare them, so at the start of your script you can do something like this, then check it later

define('LOGGED_IN', empty($_SESSION['userid']) ? 0 : 1);

...

function foo()
{
    if (!LOGGED_IN)
    {
        echo 'oy!  Nick off!';
    }
}

kkobashi

Use $gDocRoot = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] and put it in a global include file. Reference and build your path strings around $gDocRoot in all your files.

You should never have to use hard paths in your files! Let PHP tell you that.

Example:

Global.php

// Website url name
define("WEBSITE", "foobar.com");

// The document root
$gDocRoot = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"];
if ($strlen($gDocRoot)-1 != '//')
$gDocRoot .= "//";
$gDocRoot .= WEBSITE . "//";

// Your core include files
require_once($gDocRoot . "Error.php");

Error.php

require_once("/Include/Global.php");

class Error
{
function Show()
{
}
}

Login.php

require_once("/Include/Global.php");
require_once($gDocRoot . "framework/Blah.php");

blah;
blah;

Site Layout

It is important that you setup your Apache server to mirror your site directories. Simply create a dirctory named foobar.com (not www.foobar.com):

/htdocs/foobar.com
/htdocs/foobar.com/include
/htdocs/foobar.com/framework
/htdocs/foobar.com/images
etc.

That way you can do this:
http://localhost/Login.php (local development machine)
http://www.foobar.com/Login.php (production)

innovations

// Website url name
define("WEBSITE", "foobar.com");

// The document root
$gDocRoot = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"];
if ($strlen($gDocRoot)-1 != '//')
$gDocRoot .= "//";
$gDocRoot .= WEBSITE . "//";

// Your core include files
require_once($gDocRoot . "Error.php");

Can I use this code in my config file which is auto_prepended to all of the pages in my website via an .htaccess page? I am sure the answer is yes...

What does this code do exactly?

The if statement seems to have a condition but no curly brackets with instructions inside (Ex. If(condition){instructions}). I hope that makes sense, I am a real newbie.