using require with path

[robkir]

This works...

echo "<a href='/AYSO_tournamentMaster/tourn_director/test_path.php'>click</a>";

This does not:

 require "/AYSO_tournamentMaster/tourn_director/test_path.php";

The page with above code is in a subdirectory: /AYSO_tournamentMaster/functions/testing.php

I could use relative paths, but this seems more straightforward (except for the fact it isn't working).

Can somebody please shed some light on this?
Thanks,

Thanks,
robkir

[bradgrafelman]

You're confusing URLs (which have no relation to file paths) with file paths. "/AYSO_tournamentMaster/" as a file path suggests that the folder exists in the root of the server's hard drive (which is unlikely). Use relative paths or use $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] to get the absolute path to the root of the website and build the absolute path from there.

[sneakyimp]

To elaborate on bradgrafelman's post, when you specify a url in an <a> tag that starts with a slash, this <a> tag is ultimately interpreted by somebody's browser. The URL in the <a> tag is interpreted by the browser relative to the domain from which the current document was loaded. E.g., if you go to example.com and see an HTML page with an <a> linking to /some/path/file.html then your browser, knowing that the domain is example.com, and seeing that the url starts with a slash, will interpret it as example.com/some/path/file.html.

When you use [man]require[/man] on your PHP script, then PHP will evaluate the file you have specified relative to the file system on the server. If your specified file starts with a slash, this means you have specified a full file path relative to the root of the server's file system. If your specified file path doesn't start with a slash, then PHP will search the current [man]include_path[/man] one directory at a time (in order) and will stop as soon as it finds a matching file.

[robkir]

Thanks for the explanations. I've got a better handle on it now.

Robkir