"Failed opening '' for inclusion" error on localhost

[jonnyeol]

OK, I have my site hosted on a Unix server. I've just installed a Windows-based 'localhost' Apache/PHP/MySQL setup so I can test little bits of code prior to upload (a Linux set-up is out-of-scope at the moment, desirable as I know it is).

The problem arises from my use of 'include'. It's fairly simple. On the Unix server, the php code is just:

include $SiteRef;

Where SiteRef is an HTML file name, assigned in the URL (appending the php file path with a '?SiteRef=music.html'. It's just a way of inserting chunks of HTML. Primitive but it works. At least on the remote server.

Now, when I tried the same on my localhost setup, I get the message:

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening '' for inclusion (include_path='c:\Text\EOLv7') in C:\Text\EOLv7\eolaud.php on line 21

Having set include_path in php.ini as:

include_path = "c:\Text\EOLv7"

"c:\Text\EOLv7" is the windows path where I've placed my include files. Yet the name of the html file assigned in SiteRef has never appeared in the error message, so I can only gues there's something wrong with my syntax.

Now, I can load normal html files using

http://localhost/index.html

So Apache must be working at at least a basic level. A quick 'echo' check indicates php is running too. I just can't get include to work. I've been fiddling around all evening and am now officially Stuck!

[wilku]

The problem is with register_globals. On your local machine it's off (good thing), and on your Unix server is on (bad thing, but nearly all shared servers do this).

So in your case just add a line of code before you use this varible.

$SiteRef=$_GET['SiteRef'];

This is a good practice, because it leaves no room for error, whether the varible comes from GET, from POST, from SESSION or whatever else. It's just more secure.

[jonnyeol]

Thanks - worked a treat!

While you were writing that, I'd sussed that no GET variables were functioning, even when I just asked php to echo the thing verbatim. I just needed to find out how to turn the GET variable into a PHP variable.