REFERENCING THE URL and Variables

[chrisguk]

Hi,

This little man in the back of my head keeps telling me that I am not using PHP efficiently enough when trying to tell code where the location of things are. I will give you a few examples:

1. For the start I created a variable to deal with the URL of the site like below:

$base_url = "http://www.mysite.com/";

unitl recently I have learned a different way which I will be implementing using the define CONSTANT method like below:

define('BASE', 'www.mysite.com');

The reason I want to use that is because I am putting together a function that will detect my server name like the example below:

$host = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
if($host == 'domain.com) 
{
    define('BASE', '$host');
}
else
{
    define('BASE', '$host');
}

Firstly is the syntax correct above?

2. Images - when I check out the source of my site the location of the images are displayed like so:

<img src="http://sitenorhost/images/home/image.png" title="random image" alt="random image" class="img">

but on other sites I have visited the display output is like this:

<img src="/img/graphics/navigation/noTab/ns-logo.png" alt="Network Solutions" border="0">

Why is this, what have I done wrong. Of course from a PHP point of view I want a robust dynamic solution to locate the necessary content. This also goes for links like below:

This is how I want it:

<li><a href="/main/mypage.php">Mypage</a></li>

but my ouput is like this:

<li><a href="http://www.mysite.com/main/mypage.php">Mypage</a></li>

this is because am using the variable

$base_url

. I believe it is not good to use the methods above and would like some sound detailed advice on how to make this work for me.

I am a leaner at PHP and I have got to this stage so far.

Thanks in advance

[Derokorian]

Give this a read and see if its what you're looking for.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.4

[chrisguk]

Derokorian;11021675 wrote:

Give this a read and see if its what you're looking for.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.4

Im going to say yes and no as the information is very interesting. I am quite curious to other way using pure php and not html.

[bradgrafelman]

chrisguk;11021673 wrote:

my ouput is like this:

<li><a href="http://www.mysite.com/main/mypage.php">Mypage</a></li>

this is because am using the variable

$base_url

.

Er... so then isn't the solution obvious? Stop using $base_url.

[sneakyimp]

I have found that it is a good idea to specify the name of your domain in a constant and to define that constant in exactly one place. If I were you, I would consider using a longer constant name. Maybe something like XXX_BASE_DOMAIN where XXX is something unique to you or your site that will help you avoid a name collision with constants defined by other code you might use.

Whether you use this constant and how is another question. You only need to specify a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) in your url in an email or in someone else's site or some other thing that is not displayed from your site. Links in your site, if they lack a FQDN, it is assumed that they live in the same domain.