define base directory for include files

zzman

i have a common include file called common.php thats looks like this:

<?php
//This is the configuration file
include_once 'includes/_config.php';
....
?>

Now when i include this file into a page called test.php which in a folder called ADMIN
it cant find _config.php. How can i defin a virtual base directory so i can append it infront of all includes inside the common.php

cheerio

<?php
$includeDirectory = './includes/';
// or you can use
//$includeDirectory = '../includes/';

include $includeDirectory . '_config.php';
?>

that's a pretty basic, crummy way of doing it though

zzman

the config file is in the include/ folder. If i am trying to include this config file into a script thats in /ADMIN/somefile.php:

$includeDirectory = './includes/' is not going to work because it will be looking for the config file in the same dir which is the ADMIN dir

$includeDirectory = '../includes/'; is not going to work if i am trying to include the config file into a script thats is say ADMIN/ANOTHER_DIR/somefile.php

THis seems to be a very common issue for any site that has different directories. there has to be a simple solution to this. FYI: I dont want to set it in my php.ini file

ahundiak

ini_set('include_path',ini_get('include_path').':path_to_wherever');

NogDog

Note that you can set the include_path either in your php.ini file or a .htaccess file (if on Apache), then you can just specify the filename and not even worry about the path in your script. (When you do that, it's often a good idea to give files in the include directory a distinctive suffix (such as ".incl") to avoid possible confusion with .php files in the same directory as the calling script.