Include Path - Relative path - php

PHP-programmers!
I've got a problem with the Include-function in PHP.
I have a website which contains a left column-bar, and that column contains dynamic content which I get with the Include-function with a relative path, because absolute paths isn't available in the Include-function.
When I navigate to other files in other folders I get the error: include(folder/fileToBeIncluded.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/mywebsite/public_html/thissite/folder/subfolder/leftcolumn.php on line 3
How am I going to deal with that? I am totally lost, and I've been searching for Google and StackOverflow for about 10 minutes now.
Thank you!

Absolute paths are can be used with the include statement.
Try:
include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/folder/fileToBeIncluded.php';
// or
include dirname(__FILE__) . '/../fileToBeIncluded.php'; // relative to the path of the file doing the include
At the very least, you can hardcode the path to be absolutely sure (until you move your site elsewhere):
include '/home/yoursite/public_html/folder/fileToInclude.php';
Please see include documentation.

May I suggest creating a dedicated "includes" folder? Something like:
/home/mywebsite/includes
in php.ini, you'd need to add:
include_path = "/home/mywebsite/includes/"
That way, all calls to include check from /home/mywebsite/includes for the file you need before looking for it relative to the location of the current page being process.

Related

No such file or directory (path error)

Well, the structure of site is simple:
site.com
'config' folder
config.php
cesar.php
'login' folder
index.php
index.php
Config.php:
include_once '../config/cesar.php';
At site.com/index.php:
Warning: include_once(../config/cesar.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory
At site.com/login/index.php everything is OK.
If I will remove one dot (./config/cesar.php), main index will become OK and login page will get the error.
How to make both codes work?
The .. in your path are used to go up a directory because of that the file won't exist where you are looking for it.
If you update it to be include_once 'config/cesar.php'; it should work since that will allow it to go down into the config directory rather than try to find a directory with the name of config 1 level above where index.php is located.
./ works since . is the notation for the current directory.
To answer your question, it wouldn't be possible to have the code work by using a relative path since both the files are in different locations on the server in relation to the one you want to include. If you want to have something that does then you will need to use an absolute path rather than the relative path. This would be something like /path/to/webdirectory/site.com/path/to/file/config.php (i.e. /home/charles/websites/site.com/config/config.php) in *nix and C:\path\to\webdirectory\site.com\path\to\file\config.php on windows.
In PHP you should be able to get the absolute path in a dynamic way by using the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] variable. Ex: include_once $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/config/cesar.php';
Warning: include_once(../config/cesar.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory
I ran into a similar problem once. You need to remember that (./config/xxx.php) and (config/xxx.php) mean the same thing but (../config/xxx.php) will go up a directory and find the config folder and xxx.php file in it.
You can also use $base_url as a prepend string to all your paths to make it clean. Where:
$base_url = 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
Then replace your paths like
../config/xxx.php
with
$base_url.'/config/xxx.php'

../ on URL on php not working

this is kind of a silly question, but as I can't sort it out I thought it might be good to get some help. The point is that the ".. /" to go back directory is not working.
The file I'm executing is in a folder that's on the main route and I need to go back to the main route and then enter another folder to load this other PHP file but it's not working what could be causing this issue.
ERRORS:
Warning: require_once(../PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in things/public_html/classes/Mail.php on line 3
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '../PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php' (include_path='.:/opt/alt/php71/usr/share/pear') in things/public_html/classes/Mail.php on line 3
DIRECTORY STRUCTURE:
File where the requiere once is:
/public_html/classes/filethatwantstoacces.php
File where it wants to get:
/public_html/PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php
require_once('../PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php');
What you should be using is the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] variable. Please read this answer to another question for details.
If you are using PHP you should get into a habit of NOT using relative file paths at all but to use absolute paths, which will guarentee to succeed every time (As long as the target file exists and is reachable, etc.).
so; use $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']
As a side note, you do not need to use brackets for your includes/requires, it's simply giving the server more work to do for no extra benefit.
The $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is the base directory of your PHP/web application, typically the contents of the folder /public_html.
Using correct syntax and the above $_SERVER value (which will point to the /public_html folder you will have:
require_once $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';
This will work from any script within your directory structure, if the file (PHPMailerAutoload.php) exists and is reachable at that given location
Given your location
/public_html/classes/filethatwantstoacces.php
doing ../ gives you
/public_html/classes
so ../PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php evaluates to
/public_html/classes/PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php
As #Martin has pointed out, using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] to construct an absolute path to your file is the easiest way to avoid relative directory navigation errors such as this:
require_once $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/PHPMailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php';

/.. Not working in PHP

For requiring files in my PHP scripts I am using the following code :
require(dirname(__FILE__)."/../config.php");
with the config.php file being located a level higher than the file requiring it. However this appears to not work and the file cannot be located, with the following error :
failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home3/**myusername**/public_html/PHP/access/login.php on line 3
I'm not sure what the error is as I have looked online and this appears to be the way others have done it. I believe however that the /.. is not causing it to go up a level.
EDIT 1
I changed the code to
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/PHP/config.php");
and still receive the same error.
EDIT 2
The reason I am using an absolute path is because I have been led to believe this will work no matter where I call the file from, i.e if a file in a different directory includes this file (for this particular file it wont be the case but it will be in other files where I will use this) it will still include the config.php file correctly and not relative to the path of the file that included login.php.
EDIT 3
if I vardump the require path it prints the following :
string(52) "/home3/*myusername*/public_html/PHP/access/../config.php"
so obviously not going to the right location.
EDIT 4
Absolute path of file being required
/home3/*myusername*/public_html/PHP/config.php
Absolute path of file requiring it
/home3/*myusername*/public_html/PHP/access/login.php
try providing relative path to root. This is a better approach then providing relative to current file.
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/config.php");
Remove the first / - "../config.php"

$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] path not working

I am using document root to provide absolute path which is not working. if i echo this path it turns out to be C:wamp/www/proman/header.php. I i give relative path it works fine what is the problem here?
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."proman/header.php";
I elaborate my problem here: I have 2 php files data_object.php and user.class.php. user.class.php has an include statement for data_object.php which is relative to user.class.php.These two files are under different directory hierarchy.
Now I have to include this user.class.php in various files (like projects.php, links.php) under different hierarchy when I want to create a User() object. The problem is the relative path for file inclusion of data_object.php does work for say projects.php but if I open links.php the error message says it could not open file data_object.php in user.class.php.
What I think is for relative inclusion of data_object.php it is considering the path of the file in which user.class.php is included.
I am facing such problems in more than one scenarios I have to keep my directory structure the way it is but have to find a way to work with nested includes. I am currently running on a WAMP server but after completion I have to host the solution on a domain. Pls help
Since that's a server variable, you may or may not see it, depending on which web server you're running under (especially IIS), or if something's configured weird.
One way to deal with this problem is to set the variable.
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = "C:/some/absolute/path";
// or, if you put this code in a file that's in your document root:
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = dirname(__FILE__);
Then, you can either require() this file when you need to verify the document root, or use the auto_prepend_file php.ini option to include the file automatically.
If you are actually trying to make a URL, then you just specify an absolute URL - /proman/header.php, or a relative URL - ../proman/header.php.
In my experience, $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] doesn't including a trailing slash. Try:
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/proman/header.php';

PHP include file

i have two files:(localhost/template/)
index.php
template.php
each time when i create an article(an article system is what i'm trying to do),i create a folder and then i copy the index.php in that folder. I want to include template php in index.php but as a static url('cause the articles will be like a folder-subfolder/subfolder/.. structure )
i tried: include('localhost/template/template.php') with no result. how should i include it? thanks
The include method works on the file system path, not the "url path". Solution is to either
Give it an absolute path.
-- include('/some/path/to/template.php');
Change the relative path so it is correct after each copy you create.
-- include('../../template.php');
Change the include path of PHP so that the file is in, well, the include path.
-- Can be done either in the php.ini file, in the .htaccess file or with the set_include_path function. (Depending on how much you want to set it for, and what you have permission for)
You could include it relative to the current directory, like so:
require_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/template.php');
dirname(FILE) will translate to the directory of the current script (index.php) and the line above will append '/template.php' resulting in the full path to the template.php side-by-side to the index.php file.
I find it best to include files this way vs without a full path to avoid issues with the PHP search path, for example. It's very explicit this way.
UPDATE: I misunderstood the original question. It sounds like template.php isn't copied, only index.php is. So you'll have something that could be like:
template/template.php
template/index.php (just a template)
foo/bar/index.php
foo/bar2/index.php
Since people can hit the foo/bar/index.php for example without funneling through a central script, you'll have to somehow find the template no matter where you are.
You can do this by setting the PHP include_path, for example through a .htaccess on a Apache server:
php_value include_path ".:/home/<snip>/template"
Then in each index.php you can include template.php and it'll search the current directory first, then try your template directory.
You could also compute the relative path when copying the script and put an include in there with the proper number of '..' to get out (e.g. '../../template/template.php'). It's kinda fragile, though.
You don't want the "localhost" in there. Includes work using the actual path on your server.
So you can either use relative ones such as posted above, or absolute in terms of server so this could be "/opt/www/" on linux or "c:\Program Files\Apache\htdocs" on windows. This will be different from system to system so to find out yours use the dirname(__FILE__) technique shown by wojo.
If you're trying to include the file as an url, you'll need to start it with http:// and have allow_url_include set to true in PHP settings. This is highly discouraged as it opens doors for security breaches.
Instead, you should either add localhost/template to your include path or use relative urls like include('../template.php').
The path looks wrong, you should include it with a path relative to where the calling file is, e.g. include('template/template.php'); or include('../template/template.php');

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