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Question

PHP Include Paths

Answer 1

+2 A:

One Idea

Use the full URL in header.html. This will be unambiguous and robust.

<head>
<link href="/FULL_BASE_URL/style/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

Another Idea

Use the <base> header tag. This allows you to specify a base URL for links, including CSS, and may require the least work in the short term (see note below).

<head>
<base href="FULL_BASE_URL" />
<link href="style/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

More at w3schools

Note: As is noted in the comments below base may ultimately cause more confusion than it is worth.

Geoff 2010-05-04 18:05:54

+1. In my opinion, you should always use absolute paths in your HTML when including scripts and CSS; unless you're building a high-portability script for distribution, using absolute paths means you never have to second guess whether or not a resource file will load.

Dereleased 2010-05-04 18:07:37

base is bad because leads to a spaghetty code, while absolute path ia always unambigous

Col. Shrapnel 2010-05-04 18:24:26

You guys are right. I've edited my response to include a warning. Thanks.

Geoff 2010-05-04 18:53:05

`<base>` is horrible because it affects all non-absolute urls in your document.

Kenaniah 2010-05-04 18:53:11

Answer 2

A:

Hey Kerion.

The first thing for you to understand, is your question has nothing PHP related. It is as simple as just filenames in your HTML questuon. Without PHP it will remain the same. Just use absolute path to your CSS file

And another thing to think of: consider to accept some questions.

Col. Shrapnel 2010-05-04 18:26:38

Voted down because the question specifically asked how to reference static paths in a portable manner.

Kenaniah 2010-05-04 18:50:57

Answer 3

+1 A:

I like to define both an absolute path and a webroot in a central place in your application:

<?php

  define("APP_WEBROOT", "/myapp"); 
  define("APP_ROOTDIR", "/home/www/example.com/htdocs/myapp");

 ?>

you can then "absolutize" the correct links like so:

<?php echo APP_WEBROOT; ?>/software/CSS/style.css

I prefer this

over <base> because that tag creates confusion and makes code harder to maintain in the long run
over using absolute paths /software/CSS/style.css because those make you unable to install your application in a subdirectory of your choice: You will always be bound to the root directory.

Pekka 2010-05-04 18:30:06

Do you use the first one in your projects?

Col. Shrapnel 2010-05-04 18:31:14

@Col not in this exact form but in principle, yes (I often use a `conf()` function). Why?

Pekka 2010-05-04 18:31:38

i think it's redundant. your app's webroot is not too often differs from just `/` to use such a construct <?php echo APP_WEBROOT; ?> for the every link on your site

Col. Shrapnel 2010-05-04 18:39:30

@Col it depends. I sometimes write web apps that are distributed as a package and need to be able to be installed in a directory other than web root (`www.example.com/myapp/version2/...`). For that scenario, I have not found a simpler solution yet than to explicitly define the base paths - DOCUMENT_ROOT won't work here. (I'm not too fond of it myself, I'm always interested if there's a simpler idea.)

Pekka 2010-05-04 18:41:31

@Col I think Wordpress analyzes DOCUMENT_ROOT and compares it to the current directory, to find out at which point in the folder hierarchy it resides and where the root dir is. I've never looked closely at it but that sounds like a way to find it out automatically. (It would still require adding a constant to every link.)

Pekka 2010-05-04 18:46:03

There's no point in adding the http://.../ part to your path. Your webroot should start with a trailing slash. This allows compatibility with different hostnames.

Kenaniah 2010-05-04 18:52:10

@Kenaniah you have a point. There are setups where a host name makes sense but they are rare.

Pekka 2010-05-04 18:54:48

Answer 4

+2 A:

I would definitely not use <base>. I've run into many problems with this before. If you use <base>, ALL of your links will become relative to that base value.

Instead, I would recommend setting PHP constants for common directories. For example:

PHP Code:

<?php
    define('CSS_DIR', '/SysProgs/required/CSS/');
?>

HTML Code:

<link href="<?php echo CSS_DIR ?>style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Bryan Downing 2010-05-04 18:43:56

Thankyou so much, this way is so simple and works perfectly!

Keiron Lowe 2010-05-04 21:15:27

I actually tried this on my hosting and I am getting these errors:http://keironlowe.host56.com/software/What do they mean?

Keiron Lowe 2010-05-04 22:08:35

Looks like you're missing a slash somewhere. `/usr/local/apache/htdocsrequired/intro.php` There should be a slash after htdocs.

Bryan Downing 2010-05-05 17:03:55

Yea I've looked through my code and that is nowhere to be seen

Keiron Lowe 2010-05-05 18:42:06

Ok there was a slash missing my bad, I've fixed it but it still comes up with errors

Keiron Lowe 2010-05-05 18:44:26

Looks like a problem with permissions. Check out [this link](http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/03/15/php-scripts-open_basedir-restriction-in-effect-error/) for more info. You may want to post another question about this error.

Bryan Downing 2010-05-05 22:08:47

Thanks for your help, you've been fantastic!

Keiron Lowe 2010-05-06 11:15:39

It would be good if you would accept Bryan's answer, Keiron.

Geoff 2010-05-06 14:27:14

Sorry I forgot ^^

Keiron Lowe 2010-05-06 18:29:20

Thanks Geoff and Keiron! =)

Bryan Downing 2010-05-06 21:57:41

Answer 5

A:

I run into this problem a lot when designing sites. When I have custom CMS, I use the following:

$basedir = "root_directory/";
$basedirPHP = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$basedir;
$basedirHTML = "http://".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$basedir;

I define $basedir so I can move the site to different subdirectories in the server without any effort. The $basedirPHP and $basedirHTML are so I can call on files either with php, or like you mentioned, when linking CSS, JS, etc.

If you're on wordpress, just use the good ol' bloginfo('template_directory'); to do the same in template files.

Erin 2010-05-04 21:31:02

I would refrain from including the CSS directory in whatever variable you use, simply because you won't have the flexibility of using the variable for files in other directories.That's just my preference, though. Nothing's stopping you from having a variable for each directory you're using.

Erin 2010-05-04 21:32:54

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