Use PHP classes on a ma - php

Question

I'm new to PHP and I need to use some classes from an external library in my project.
My .php file, SMMain.php is in /Library/WebServer/Documents directory on my Mac. I placed the classes from the outside library right there next to it. All of these files are from the namespace Parse;. Some of the classes are in a directory called Internal.
No matter what require_once I try I get errors that the files are not found. Here's what I tried:
require_once('\Internal\Encodable.php');
produces this error:
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '\Internal\Encodable.php' (include_path='.:') in /Library/WebServer/Documents/SMMain.php on line 13
Next try:
require_once('/Internal/Encodable.php');
produces this:
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '.php' (include_path='.:') in /Library/WebServer/Documents/SMMain.php on line 7
I also tried:
require_once(realpath($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]) .'/Internal/Encodable.php');
Gives no error for the /Internal/Encodable file, but this produces another error:
Fatal error: Class 'ParseObject' not found in /Library/WebServer/Documents/SMMain.php on line 24
ParseObject.php is in the root directory together with my SMMain.php. So I tried requiring it like this:
require_once(realpath($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]) . '/ParseObject.php');
which gives this error:
Fatal error: Class 'ParseObject' not found in /Library/WebServer/Documents/SMMain.php on line 24
and if I try this:
require_once(realpath($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]) . 'ParseObject.php');
the error is:
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/Library/WebServer/DocumentsParseObject.php' (include_path='.:') in /Library/WebServer/Documents/SMMain.php on line 17
So what's the solution?

Answer 1

Use require_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] .'/Internal/Encodable.php'); if the Internal directory is under the server document root and the Encodable.php is in there.
You can use the echo getcwd(); to see, where is the current working directory.
I am always doing that, when i call my index.php file (it handles all other files), to determinate, where is my base path, and store it in a constant. So lately, i will always include files with that path as an absolute path.