How do I get absolute URL's to work locally? - php

Question

Everything works how I want on my live website, but because I'm using absolute URL's in my header.php and footer.php they don't work when I'm working locally (XAMPP) - I can't figure out how to get it working on both.
Header.php
<div id="top"><center><img src="http://cosworth-europe.com/images/header.png" style="max-width:100%;"></center></div>
<header id="header" class="site-header" role="banner">
<div id="header-inner" class="container sixteen columns over">
<hgroup class="one-third column alpha">
</hgroup>
<nav id="main-nav" class="two thirds column omega">
<ul>
<li>
Home
</li>
<li>
About Us
</li>
<li>
News
</li>
<li>
Dealers
</li>
<li>
Products
</li>
<li>
Buy Online
</li>
<li>
Contact
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</div>
</header>
Code to grab header.php
<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/header.php"); ?>
FTP Folder Structure

Answer 1

You should use relative urls, its recomended for portability.
</hgroup>
<nav id="main-nav" class="two thirds column omega">
<ul>
<li>
Home
</li>
<li>
About Us
</li>
<li>
News
</li>
<li>
Dealers
</li>
<li>
Products
</li>
<li>
Buy Online
</li>
<li>
Contact
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
</div>
</header>

Answer 2

Always use relative URLs, at least to the domain.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css" />
If you really wanna use absolute URLs, set a variable as $homeroot and use it this way:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $homeroot; ?>/css/style.css" />
And you can declare it this way:
$homeroot = "http://my.example.com";
If you still want that to be more better, you can use this way:
$homeroot = $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];

Answer 3

You can do two things.
First -
Home // The relative urls
Second -
Define a variable with the host name -
$host = ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] === 'www.cosworth-europe.co.uk') ? 'http://www.cosworth-europe.co.uk' : 'http://localhost';
And
Home

Answer 4

You should not use absolute URLs, if you sometimes have to change something you will have a big mess with it.
You should use either a function or relative URLs.
Function example:
function getURL() {
//get THIS ($develop) value from a config file
$develop = true;
return ( $develop ) ? "localhost" : "http://".$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];
}
i.e.
Home
QUICKHELP:
Just edit your hosts file like this:
127.0.0.1 www.cosworth-europe.co.uk
Relative URLs (relative from doc root in this example)
<ul>
<li>
Home
</li>
<li>
About Us
</li>
<li>
News
</li>
</ul>

Answer 5

If you want to make it work without editing your source file:
Actually, you shouldn't have done with absolute URL's, but still you can make it to work locally, you need small changes in hosts file. I don't know which OS you are currently in, so you can edit hosts like this:
Ubuntu:
In your terminal, type
sudo gedit /etc/hosts
You will be required to enter your password.
In the file opened add this line to the end:
127.0.0.1 www.cosworth-europe.co.uk
Windows:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Open this in notepad with administrative privilege and add the above lines. Now local works in the similar way to your live website.
[But make sure to remove these lines, if you want to access live website (www.cosworth-europe.co.uk)]
See this for pictorial representation. In this method you need not change your files for now. But it is strongly recommended to use relative URLs for excellent portability!