Why is include('../myscript.php') causing an error? - php

Question

I've been trying to debug my PHP script and I've narrowed down the problem to the line
include "../classes.php";
at the top of my file team_manager.php which is where you see it below.
themes
my_theme
js
management
team_manager.php
project_manager.php
classes.php
footer.php
functions.php
Am I not doing the path correctly? Or could it be something wrong with the contents of classes.php? If it could be a problem with the file being included, below is the file, and let me know if anything immediately stands out as wrong.
<?php
final class MySqlInfo
{
const DBNAME = 'somedb';
const USER = 'someuser';
const PSSWD = 'somepassword';
const TEAMTABLENAME = 'sometablename';
public function getUser ( )
{
return self::USER;
}
public function getPassword ( )
{
return self::PSSWD;
}
}
final class MethodResult
{
public $succeeded;
public $message;
public MethodResult ( $succeededInit = NULL, $messageInit = NULL )
{
this->$succeeded = $succeededInit;
this->$message = $messageInit;
}
}
final class MySite
{
const ROOTURL = 'http://asite.com/subsite';
function getRootUrl()
{
return self::ROOTURL;
}
}
final class TeamManager
{
private $dbcon;
public function TeamManager ( )
{
$dbcon = mysqli_connect('localhost', MySqlInfo.getUser(), MySqlInfo::getPassword());
$dbcon->select_db(MySqlInfo::DBNAME);
// need to add error handling here
}
final public class TeamMember
{
public $name; // team member name
public $title; // team member title
public $bio; // team member bio
public $sord; // team member sort order
public $picfn; // team member profile picture file name
}
public function addMember ( TeamMember $M )
{
if ($this->$dbcon->connect_error)
{
return new MethodResult(false, 'Not connected to database');
}
$q = "INSERT INTO " . MySqlInfo::TEAMTABLENAME . " (" . implode( ',' array($M->name, $M->title, $M->bio, $M->sord, $M->picfn) ) . ") VALUES ('" . implode('\',\'', array($_POST['fullname'], $_POST['title'], $_POST['bio'], $_POST['sord'], $targetFileName)) . "')";
// ^ query for inserting member M to the database
if (!mysqli_query(this->$dbcon, $q))
{
return new MethodResult(false, 'Query to insert new team member failed');
}
return new MethodResult(true, 'Successfully added new member' . $M->name);
}
}
?>

Answer 1

include() might cause an error in case it can't find a file to be included. It's that simple. So you have to make sure that file exists before you include it. Also, never use relative paths like ../script.php, as they introduce a number of issues. And one major issue is that, some hosting providers don't allow relative paths due to security reasons.
So to make sure the file can be included, simply do the check for its existence:
<?php
// dirname(__FILE__) returns an absolute path of the current script
// which is being executed
$file = dirname(__FILE__) . '/script.php';
if (is_file($file)) {
include($file);
} else {
echo 'File does not exist';
}
Also, I see that you write code as an old-school. You might want to take a look at PSR-FIG standards.