PHP as an alternative to ASP

Anon

Hi I am a bit of a PHP rookie. I have a good grasp of SQL, vbScript, JavaScript and have developed a few sites using ASP(active Server pages). I am now trying to learn how PHP works. In ASP I can get teh path to the root of the site/Application using Server.MapPath. Is there a php command that gives me the exact same info or do I need to manipulate the string that is returned from PATH_INFO which returns me the path and the filename.

Anon

Create a script with this in it:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

That'll give you all the variables to paths needed for most development.

Anon

Yes I have it but ... say in a script I want to utilize the same include file from different levels - say one time from a subfolder off of the root and another time the same include from a subfolder 2 or 3 levels down - normally I can do the paths relative to the root but I keep finding that I have to work around this. It doesn't matter if it is a debug file that will be removed from production code but when it is a graphic/image file it is inconvienent.

Using server.MapPath I can populate a variable with the path to the root folder & I'm hoping there is a similar method available to me in PHP.

Anon

Use the pre-defined variable
$DOCUMENT_ROOT

See manual page for more:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/language.variables.predefined.php

Anon

Thanks guys ... I am reading the manual, its a bit dry but I am trying. Thanks again.

[deleted]

Have a quick glance at the top of each chapter, just to read the function names, it really helps to get an idea of what is available to you.

Anon

Hi!

The best approach to dealing with includes is this:
1) define a constant in a separate include file that will be included with each page, say includer.php, and place it in every folder. The constant should point to the web root of your site from all files in current folder.
define("SITE_ROOT", "../");

As you may guess, the constant will be declared differently in different levels of directory hierarchy

2) include this file in every page
3) do includes like this:
include(SITE_ROOT."inc/classes.inc.php");

If you place any of your files in another locations, you won't need to reconfigure include paths. All you need to do is ensure whether there is includer.php in the same folder and that the path to web root is set correctly in it.

Hope that helped,
Stas