Sub Domain utilizing same application files as root (using PHP) - php

This question seems really elementary, but I have never had a use for the scenario as of yet, so figure I will get some advice. I am building a complex application with an accompanying API in a LAMP environment.
mydomain.com will be the location of the main service and system.
api.mydomain.com will be the location of all endpoints for my API.
All of the class files, DB config files, etc, will be located at main domain/root folder.
Is there a recommended way to handle this? Or is it as simple as including the required files on the API side/folder?

It all depends on whether api.mydomain.com is on the same server as mydomain.com. If they are, you could allow access to the shared files from both areas by using direct paths. So for example, say you have a structure like this:
/webdata/shared
/webdata/api
/webdata/www
You could simply just do an include like:
include_once('/webdata/shared/config.php');

As it is on the same server, it should be no problem. You should use absolute paths for including, so for example /web/www/htdocs/config.inc.php instead of ../htdocs/config.inc.php, as it would get really confusing.
It would be the best to have a simple pathConf.inc.php in api directory and root directory, containing this absolute path - so you will be able to easily change it afterwards. Then, use this path configured in pathConf.inc.php and include your classes, db configs etc.

Related

Deny access to files and folders within web root without using .htaccess

Is it possible to deny access to files and folders within the web root without using .htaccess or file permissions? A universal solution that works with all servers?
This relates to a flat-file framework I'm making with PHP where the requirement is basically "drag the project folder in the web root to launch the site." The other goal is for there to be a front-end interface where the client can log in and edit content.
I deal a lot with shared hosting accounts where I can't always change the web root. Additionally, I don't necessarily want to rely on developers manually setting file permissions. The reason why I don't want to use .htaccess is that, one, it relies on the host being an Apache server, and, two, it relies on specific Apache settings.
EDIT: specificity
This was answered here with a couple of really great answers you'll probably find useful:
Prevent access to files from Apache without .htaccess
The first suggests setting permissions to be inaccessible and CHMODDing them with PHP when you need to access them.
The second suggested you place them outside of your web root but keep them accessible by PHP (using include(), I would assume).
Either or should accomplish what you're hoping. (Wish I could comment stuff like this.)

Subdomains and accessing common files on main domain

Where my domain is for example mywebsite.com, I have a some directories I keep common assets such as mywebsite.com/css or mywebsite.com/tools.
When I create subdomain sites here mywebsite.com/sites/mysubdomain1/, where the sub domain would be mapped http://mysubdomain1.com, I'm having issues including the files from the main domain.
Currently when visiting http://mysubdomain1.com all the includes are breaking, as it is treating mysubdomain1 as the server root, not mywebsite.
After some research, symlinks come up as an option, but it seems to me that this is a way to point elsewhere on the server like a shortcut, which is not what I'm after. Is this something better suited to .htaccess? I couldn't find (or at least understand how to implement) an example that solved this seemingly basic issue.
I'd also like this to work as I develop on localhost, which is why I'm not just going with absolute urls.
How could I get this to work? Thanks
I definitely would use the symbolic link method. If you could get that working it would be the quickest, easiest and best option: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/urlmapping.html
Other alternatives:
Save the absolute path in a var or php.ini so that you can have a different one for production and local host
If you really wanted to take the time, you could use some type of php routing engine and code to serve files from a different path... I'm sure it could work but I think it would take a lot of effort.

Consolidate multiple site files into single location

We have a custom PHP/MySQL CMS running on Linux/Apache thats rolled out to multiple sites (20+) on the same server. Each site uses exactly the same CMS files with a few files for each site being customised.
The customised files for each site are:
/library/mysql_connect.php
/public_html/css/*
/public_html/ftparea/*
/public_html/images/*
There's also a couple of other random files inside /public_html/includes/ that are unique to each site. Other than this each site on the server uses the exact same files. Each site sitting within /home/username/. There is obviously a massive amount of replication here as each time we want to deploy a system update we need to update to each user account. Given the common site files are all stored in SVN it would make far more sense if we were able to simply commit to SVN and deploy to a single location direct from there. Unfortunately, making a major architecture change at this stage could be problematic. In my mind the ideal scenario would mean creating an account like /home/commonfiles/ and each site using these common files unless an account specific file exists, for example a request is made to /home/user/public_html/index.php but as this file doesnt exist the request is then redirected to /home/commonfiles/public_html/index.php. I know that generally this approach is possible, similar to how Zend Framework (and probably others) redirect all requests that dont match a specific file to index.php. I'm just not sure about how exactly to go about implementing it and whether its actually advisable. Would really welcome any input/ideas people have got.
EDIT AllenJB's comment reminded me that we have previously explored AliasMatch as a potential solution to this, we ended up with an general.conf file for a user that looked something like this:
php_admin_value open_basedir "/home/commonfi:/home/usertes:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp"
php_admin_value include_path "/home/commonfi"
AliasMatch (.*).php /home/commonfi/public_html/$1.php
AliasMatch (.*).html /home/commonfi/public_html/$1.html
You can set this up via the Apache configuration - you probably want Alias, but there are several options:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/urlmapping.html
You certainly can build a "cascading" system as you describe (load local file, if that doesn't exist, load global file). The complexity is that the files are loaded in different ways (using include() in PHP, through the web, ... maybe even more ways?)
Filesystem includes
If the includes/ consist of files containing one PHP class each, you could use an autoloader like Zend Framework does. The autoloader would look first for a custom version of the include file, and if it doesn't find one, include the global version instead. I happen to have such an autoloader handy if you need code to start with.
If the includes don't match the one-class-per-file structure, you would have to build a custom include() function that fetches the local version of the file or, failing that, the global one.
Pseudo-code:
function fetch_path($name)
{
if (file_exists(LOCAL_DIRECTORY."/$name")) return LOCAL_DIRECTORY."/$name";
if (file_exists(GLOBAL_DIRECTORY."/$name")) return GLOBAL_DIRECTORY."/$name";
return false;
}
Web resources
The second part is going to be the web part (i.e. Web URLs with local or global files). I think this should be pretty easily solvable using the -f switch in a .htaccess file. You would build a rule that rewrites failed requests (!-f) to the local web resources directory (example.com/css/main_stylesheet.css) to the global one /home/commonfiles/public_html/main_stylesheet.css). You would need to fiddle around with Apache's server config to be able to rewrite local requests to the commonfiles directory, but it should be possible.
That is maybe worth a separate question.

How to keep relative filepaths intact, even though I'm bootstrapping

I'm trying to include a premade messageboard, Phorum, into one of my Zend projects. Phorum is a relatively large and intricate web of PHP includes. My website already has a signup, so I'm trying to combine the two login systems into one.
What I've done is to make a controller that includes the Phorum index.php. This will let me use the authentication system I've set up. My problem is that, since I'm bootstrapping, all the relative filepaths within Phorum's index.php seem to try to begin at my Zend project's index.php, meaning they all seem to break.
Is there a way around this? Should I include? Render? Something better?
All help is appreciated.
Adding the appropriate chdir (back to Phorums include path root) in your Bootstrap file should do it. Then you have to of course take care that you Zend App uses application specific and not relative paths.
You can use the include_path setting, which can be set at runtime using set_include_path(). This doesn't require you to change the working directory, but makes PHP search for includes in all the directories specified in this setting.

Strategy for subdomain applications using PHP

Not quite sure how to phrase this, but will do my best.
I have an application (written in PHP) that I want to install somewhere like this:
/app/build/1.0/
Now, I want to be able to set up subdomains, something like this:
http://sub1.mydomain.com
http://sub2.mydomain.com
etc ..
First, I want to put the least # files as possible in the subdomains (I am thinking just a config file), and point to the build folder for all php files.
However, in the case where the subdomain has some sort of customization, I would like to be able to actually place the customized file in the subdomain, and then the app would use that (in other words, app first looks for local file, if it exists use it, otherwise, use the default build folder files).
Last, if I release 1.1, I should simply be able to re-point the subdomains to the 1.1 folder.
I have a basic understanding of this and how I might achieve it, but what I am looking for is alternative ideas, or gotchas I may face (or anything else I may not have considered like scalability issues I may not see yet, or other things I may not be able to do if I go this route).
Bottom line question: Is this a good or bad idea, and why?
I'm assuming that the config file in each subdomain means there will be config differences for every site, so that you can't combine all of the uncustomized sites into one folder and simply have the subdomains point to it (in DNS).
I have set up sites such that the subdomains would have a single index.php file. The index.php file would define a bunch of config options and then call something equivalent to startApp(); Each site would have its include path set to include the application files. That can be done in the apache config or in the index.php file.
If you want to customize a site, then you would change the include path to point to the customized code, which you could keep in that sites folder if you want.
Honestly, I think the harder problem will be keeping all the customizations documented and updated. That's a totally different problem though.

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