Problem including files from above directory

Popovich88

Hi.
I have a web project with the following structure

root/
-functions/
-classes/

...

In a file located in functions folder i need to include a class from classes folder.
I use require_once('../classes/classname.php');

But when i run the script i get the following error:

Warning: require_once(../classes/DAL.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\wamp\www\SiteWD\functions\getCountries.php on line 2.

What i am doing wrong?

NogDog

The path will be relative to the main script's directory, not necessarily the included file's directory. Probably the simplest thing would be to set the include_path to your application's root directory. Alternatively, if you run some sort of config file, you could set a constant in it for the base path of your application, then use that constant for your includes/requires when specifying the path.

bradgrafelman

The path as shown in the error message does indeed indicate that the script is being executed in the 'functions' directory.. are you positive that this 'DAL.php' is in that folder? Since you're on Windows, are you sure that "Hide file extensions for known file types" isn't enabled and that the file was actually named something like DAL.php.txt ?

Popovich88

I managed to solve it using ./classes/DAL.php instead of ../classes/DAL.php.

Does anybody know the difference between ./ and ../ ?.

I found the example with "./" in a book but in other languages i have always used "../ ".

EDIT: That trick didnt work in another file.
Maybe it´s some problem related with wamp or apache?

NogDog

"." means "the current directory"
".." means "up one directory level from the current directory"

So using either will be dependent on where the current script is running in the directory structure. (This is why setting an include_path for the application can save you a lot of grief, as you would then not have to worry about specifying the relative path. Alternatively, using an absolute path will save you from the same problem, but can be a pain in the butt if you ever want to change the directory structure/names in any way.)