What is the best syntax for includes?

loweauto

Hello, I'm trying to build my site with using includes, as to have separate files to be included for the head, navigation bar, footer, etc.

What is the best syntax, or form of include, or way of writing for this purpose?

Just to have index.html have various includes to files such as head.html, nav.html, footer.html etc.

Currently I'm using the following line everywhere I want to do this:

<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/head.html"); ?>

Would you advise doing otherwise? Can you see any problems with this?

FYI: The index.html is just a regular file, containing info about the site (and of course I've turned on the function in htaccess so that php can be executed in html files), and all the files I'm including also have regular HTML, some will have some php, and Ajax (for forms), and one will be a blog page (probably with Wordpress).

NogDog

Looks OK to me (though personally I leave out the parentheses, as they are optional). You could set the include path to avoid always having to type out the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] stuff.

<?php
set_include_path($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . PATH_SEPARATOR . get_include_path());
include 'head.html';
?>
blah...blah...blah...
<?php
include 'foot.html';
?>

loweauto

NogDog;10949523 wrote:
Looks OK to me (though personally I leave out the parentheses, as they are optional). You could set the include path to avoid always having to type out the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] stuff.
<?php
set_include_path($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . PATH_SEPARATOR. get_include_path());
include 'head.html';
?>
blah...blah...blah...
<?php
include 'foot.html';
?>

interesting, so if my include path is /includes/
everytime i use the function you wrote - it'll go to thre automatically?
what if i want to use a different include somewhere?

(or does setting the include path only work in that one file - i.e. it has to be defined at the start of the document, and then used throughout?)

anyway, how would i set my specific include path? do i replace PATH_SEPARATOR?
(sorry im pretty bad at php)

Weedpacket

loweauto wrote:
or does setting the include path only work in that one file

It's set in php_ini, and applies to every page. While you're there, have a look at the auto_prepend setting as well.

NogDog

As the weed man said, you can set the include_path globally for your server in the php.ini file, or at the directory (site?) level via .htaccess. If you opt to set it at the script level via the set_include_path() function as in my example, you would specify the directory to your include directory, and then in my example I was concatenating it with the current include_path setting (as obtained from get_include_path()) so that you don't lose that. PATH_SEPARATOR is just a built-in constant that is whichever character is appropriate for the current OS to use to separate multiple paths. In your case, you might change it to:

set_include_path($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/includes/' . PATH_SEPARATOR.
   get_include_path());

loweauto

NogDog;10949560 wrote:
As the weed man said, you can set the include_path globally for your server in the php.ini file, or at the directory (site?) level via .htaccess. If you opt to set it at the script level via the set_include_path() function as in my example, you would specify the directory to your include directory, and then in my example I was concatenating it with the current include_path setting (as obtained from get_include_path()) so that you don't lose that. PATH_SEPARATOR is just a built-in constant that is whichever character is appropriate for the current OS to use to separate multiple paths. In your case, you might change it to:
set_include_path($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/includes/' . PATH_SEPARATOR.
   get_include_path());

Hello, thanks for the explanations. So I would put the code above into htaccess?

What if once, for whatever reason, I want to include a file that's not in /includes/ when I have this previous include path set? In common parlor, is there a way to back out of it for a single time or two?

bradgrafelman

loweauto wrote:
So I would put the code above into htaccess?

No; the above code is PHP code. There is a different syntax for modifying PHP directives via a .htaccess file (assuming you have the ability to do so) - see the following manual page for more info: [man]configuration.changes[/man].

loweauto wrote:
is there a way to back out of it for a single time or two?

Sure, just use a valid path (either relative or absolute).

Weedpacket

loweauto wrote:
I want to include a file that's not in /includes/ when I have this previous include path set? In common parlor, is there a way to back out of it for a single time or two?

You don't need to: the include path is used to search for files generally, but it doesn't get in the way of including files specifically. If PHP finds the file where you say it is, that's the file it will include; it only goes searching if it doesn't find a file there and that's where the include path comes in.

The include path is a list of directories where PHP searches for files that are specified using relative paths. The path (usually!) starts with "." - shorthand for "the current directory", so the first place it looks is relative to the current directory. Other directories in the path are tried until (hopefully) the file is found.

If, for example, the path is [font=monospace]".:/php/includes:/php/pear:./assets:/usr/jrandom/www/extras:./../fnord"[/font], and you have a PHP file [font=monospace]/var/www/htdocs/core/esoterica.php[/font], and in that file is the line [font=monospace]include 'something.php';[/font] PHP will look for the following files in order, stopping when it finds one of them (or running out of places to look, at which point it will complain):

[font=monospace]/var/www/htdocs/core/something.php[/font] (note, the same place as esoterica.php - which you'd expect because there's no mention of changing directories in the include statement).
[font=monospace]/php/includes/something.php[/font]
[font=monospace]/php/pear/something.php[/font]
[font=monospace]/var/www/htdocs/core/assets/something.php[/font]
[font=monospace]/usr/jrandom/www/extras/something.php[/font]
[font=monospace]/var/www/htdocs/fnord/something.php[/font]