[RESOLVED] Site-Root-Relative Paths

[chrislead]

Hey,

Hope someone can help we with this I have searched the net for hours now and found no luck.

I basically want a way of referring to the website's root dir - from which I can provide links to the files I want to reference from anywhere on my site at any level.

The problem:

On each page of my site I start a script with:

require("includes/inc_functions.php");

Ok, all well and good, however in the file 'inc_functions.php' I have this line of code:

$imagePathSource = "images/thumbnail/".$_SESSION['memberImg']; 

---> I want to alter this line above to something like:

$imagePathSource = "myWebsiteRoot/images/thumbnail/".$_SESSION['memberImg']; So that I can include this functions file anywhere on my site and I always refer to this same image folder correctly. Hope that makes sense.

I have tried

$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/images/thumbnail etc

...and no luck, I simply get thrown a URL such as:

mydomain.com/serverFile/file/serverFile/mydomain.com/images/thumbnail/ !!!!

I have also tried simply using "/images/thumbnail" - With a single slash to start off -I have read many a place that this should refer to the site root automatically, but again no luck.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[NogDog]

The $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] thing should work. If not, either you have a typo somewhere or something weird is going on with your webserver/PHP environment.

(The "/images/thumbnail" thing will not work for includes and other filesystem calls, because that is a HTTP thing, not a filesystem thing. In UNIX/LINUX "/" is the root directory of the current drive.)

[chrislead]

Cheers for your reply mate,

When I use $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] I basically get nothing on the page, blank! I.e. It isn't looking at the right directory. Therefore, to actually find out where it is looking I placed the same code in hyperlink as so:

<a href="<?php echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; ?>/images/thumbnail/">Test</a>

...And when clicked I get this as its target dir:

www.mydomain.com/home/username/mydomain.com/members/images/thumbnail/

And I want: www.mydomain.com/images/thumbnail/

Hope this makes more sense.
Cheers.

[NogDog]

OK, you're confusing me. :p

If you want a link in a web page, then you can use "/" as the root directory of the current web domain, e.g.:

<a href="/images/thumbnail/<?php echo $imageName; ?>">View image</a>

I thought you were talking about including files, which would require a filesystem path rather than a web path, e.g.:

include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/includes/foobar.php";

[chrislead]

Yea, sorry, I am indeed talking about requiring a filesystem path, I just thought I would attempt it inside of a hyperlink simply to give me an idea of the path $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] was producing.

As I say, if I use it as I would expect it to work:

$imagePathSource = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/members/images/thumbnail/".$_SESSION['memberImg']; 

...I am expecting an image to appear and instead I get nothing. No errors or anything.

If it helps, I am using this funciton to retrieve this image's data before I show it

getimagesize($imagePathSource);

...and I am also displaying the image in the following way:

background-image:url(<?php echo $imagePathSource; ?>);

Maybe this could be the problem?

Cheers again.

[NogDog]

For the getimagesize() call, you need the filesystem path, but for the CSS background-image url value, you need a web path:

<?php
$imagePath = "/members/images/thumbnail/"
$image = $imagePath . $_SESSION['memberImg']);

getimagesize($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $image);
?>

background-image: url(<?php echo $image; ?>);

[chrislead]

You are a genius.

With a little tweaking that works perfectly!

Really appreciate your help man. Thanks very much indeed!!!!!!

All the best.