syntax for include

laura_m

I'm building a website in Dreamweaver and have created a menu/navigation bar which is called to each page by

[INDENT]<?php include 'menu.php'; ?> [/INDENT]

This works fine when the menu.php and the pagename.php files are in the same directory (in this case - "pages")

I am building gallery pages and want to put those in a different directory called galleries, with sub directories such as gallery1. (ok, they will have the artist's name, but you get the idea)

<?php include 'menu.php'; ?> no longer works. I understand it doesn't work because the menu is in a different directory. The following comes up on the page where the menu should be.

[INDENT]Warning: main(menu.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/steamya/public_html/galleries/gallery1/gallery_test1.php on line 55
[/INDENT]
What is the syntax I need to refer to the menu in the pages directory?
Or, should I put the menu somewhere completely different and if so, where and how do I link to it on each page?

So far, I can get it to work it only if I have the menu in each directory. By the time I have a bunch of different artists represented that somewhat defeats the purpose of having one menu that I can make global changes to.

Thanks,
laura

esukf

//use the full path
<?php include('/home/steamya/public_html/galleries/menu.php') ?>

suntra

I would suggest using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] which will return the path to your document root. Then, you simply add the other directories...

For example, let's say your DOCUMENT_ROOT is /home/steamya/public_html/

Your project is :

in /home/steamya/public_html/galleries/ on your hard drive;
in http://localhost/galleries/ on your server

According to what your said, the include would be directly in your project directory, so it would be :

/home/steamya/public_html/galleries/menu.php
http://localhost/galleries/menu.php

Now, in every page, you would simply have to write :

include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/galleries/menu.php';

And that's it !

NogDog

Another alternative would be to add the directory with the file to be included to your PHP include_path, either in php.ini or in a .htaccess file. Then you can just specify the file name and don't have to worry about the path. The syntax in your .htaccess file would be something like:

php_value include_path .:/home/steamya/public_html/galleries

(The "." before the ":" means to search the script's own directory first, then look in the next directory, etc., each directory path being separated by a ":".)

laura_m

Thank you for the responses. I tried Suntra's yesterday, did something wrong and messed up everything, but I'm working on it. I will try the others too. I am grateful for the help. Thank you! My knowledge of php barely goes beyond being able to spell it.