I am brand new to PHP. I want to use it to include a universal header and footer in an html/jquery site. Currently I am using includes to do this:
<?php include('../includes/footer.php'); ?>
This works fine. Where I encounter a problem is with any images in the header or footer.
An explanation of my file structure:
Root folder: contains index.php and the folders "includes", "img", "php" etc.
php folder: contains gallery.php
includes folder: contains header.php, footer.php
When viewing the index.php all images in the header and footer show properly, but, because they are linked relatively (ex "img/facebook.png"), the do not show in gallery.php. To work they would need a ../ included. But then this would defeat the purpose of a universal header.
Thus I am trying to figure out how to link the images in the includes files in way that is doesn't matter where the php file is located. I have read this thread (which sounds like my problem) but I do not understand any of the answers. I have also read things that suggest $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] .'/folder/';, in conjunction with an echo to display the image. I tried this in my footer.php with this code:
<?php
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/img/';
$image = ($path . "facebook.png");
echo "<img src=\"$image\" />"; ?>
When I view the page though, I end up with a little torn paper icon instead of my image. I assume this means that the path is incorrect, but I do not know why. facebook.png resides in the img folder. This problem occurs on both index.php and gallery.php.
After this rather long winded explanation (sorry), my mains questions are:
1) How do I get images to show up properly in my includes across multiple directories?
2) If I am going about this in the right way with the echo, what are the possible reasons why it is not working?
Once again, I know nothing about php, so if you could try to make your answers as basic as possible, it would be much appreciated.
Thank you!
Instead of img/facebook.png, add a / before the img/ like this: /img/facebook.png
This says "go to the root, and look for the img folder there. All your images should work fine then. The path of the images are absolute or relative based on the HTML page you're viewing, not which files you use to create it.
Though there's probably not much of reason for a "php" folder - just keep all your pages in the root directory.
Related
I'm learning php, been trying to make a cms, but when I use an include for the header this results in the page appearing as if it were written in pre tags. There's no errors when I debug or anything. And I'm completely stumped. When I put the header back in without the include it renders just fine.
<?php include("..\includes\layouts\header.php"); ?>
That's the include I'm using.
I've tried using the full path name, tried it in different browsers and using :
include($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]
Check that you are closing your php tags, ending your strings with semi colons etc.. My guess is that your html is being sucked into the php code which freaks out and just dumps it.
Maybe try one of the validators such as http://phpcodechecker.com (I have not used this one so I cannot comment on it's effectiveness)
Edit: I am rereading your post and I think I understand what you are trying to say - your header contains the path to your css and when you put it in a separate php file the css doesn't work? So the first thing to do is determine if the issue with the php path or the css path inside the header.php file. Look at your source code to see if the header code is being included - if it is then play around with the css path - though including the header in a php file will not cause that css path to change.
I am guessing that your header is not included at all from your mention of paths. include() works from the loading file's location. The path it wants is a server path and not a url. The one that you have above: ../includes... means that you have an include folder at the same level as the loading file such as (assume index.php is the main file):
/includes/layouts/header.php
/somedirectory/index.php
The ../ means - drop down one directory then go up from there.
If your path is more like:
/includes/layouts/header.php
/index.php
Then the include would be:
include('./includes/layouts/header.php');
Let me know if that works - if it doesn't try to explain your directory structure.
I'm working ona site and It's becoming more complex with folder structure. I'm sure this is a simple problem for most but I keep getting mixed results.
my folder structure is something like:
Root:
assets
css
js
images
core
init.php
categories
sub category
file.php
includes
header.php
footer.php
and so on.
the init file will be included at the top of every document, excluding the header and footer.
the header and footer are included in every page.
I'd like to achieve something where instead of writing include '../../includes/footer.php' or include '../includes/footer.php' I can just write include '$root. /includes/footer.php' and not need to worry about the links.
The same applies for my nav bar (which is located in the header) if i want to go to index and i'm in a sub folder then it tries to take me to site/subFolder/index.php which doesn't exist. I'd like to use the same idea her and have the nav links as root. file location
Could someone please help? It's killing me and I'm certain it's so simple I'm looking past the obvious.
I've outputted DIR and SERVER_ROOT
I can hash something together using
$bla = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];//= c:/www
$bla.= "/nameOfMyRootFolder";
but wondering what the best way is as i keep seeing references to DIR
thanks!
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is defined in the webserver config and generally doesn't change.
__DIR__ is the directory that the file it is used in resides.
eg: in docroot/includes/header.php __DIR__ == 'docroot/includes' and $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] == 'docroot'
Documentation
I am trying to make a template for my website.
Basically taking out all the common stuff out using php's include function.
I have made a navigationbar.php and samplepage.php.
navigationbar has all the links to stylesheets etc.
When they are in the same folder and I include navigationbar.php in samplepage it works just fine.
However when i move samplepage.php to a subdirectory (leaving navigationbar.php in the same folder) and
link navigationbar.php with the menu doesn't come formatted.
it seems samplepage is getting contents from navigationbar.php but navigationbar is not linking to the css files.
Can anyone tell what I'm doing wrong here?
i'm using xampp and have tried with both relative and absolute paths- (include '../navigation.php' and 'localhost/folder/navigation.php')
Make the paths of your css files absolute (i.e. start with / and specify the full path). This will allow them to work correctly from any path.
When including a file in PHP, the url's are relative to the file you are including into. Not to the file you are including.
So you need to change your paths 'navigationbar.php'
Try using something along the lines of this to link to your header/footer files:
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/path_to/header.php');
and then appropriately link to your .js/.css files within header.
Where your PHP files are has no direct influence. You have to make sure that the resulting HTML has the correct paths to all CSS/JS/img files etc. You may want to post your file structure here and show the code that calls the relevant CSS files.
In my root directory I have a bunch of single pages and then the folder "blog" and "assets." For the pages I have a header.php/nav.php/footer.php to call for various css and js.
for example: within the header.php:
<link href="http://beta.rfahaiti.org/assets/css/bootstrap.css" rel="stylesheet">
Then, in the pages I call for: <?php include 'assets/header.php'; ?>
However, this does not seem to be working for any pages within the blog folder -- such as the index.php file in /blog/news/. I assume it's a relative vs absolute link issue but I'm not sure how to fix. Question: what does the php include call need to be for to call for the header.php file?
Thanks!
Try:
<?php include '../assets/header.php'; ?>
or
<?php include '../../assets/header.php'; ?>
depending on your folder structure.
Include paths are relative, try:
<?php include '../assets/header.php'; ?>
You will find the same with HTML document referring to resources e.g CSS.
It is a relative link issue, as you say. For pages two levels deep in /blog/news, you need to go two levels back:
../../assets/header.php
Edit thanks to Juan Sosa for pointing out that what follows is completely wrong.
Alternatively, you could write this:
/assets/header.php
The second approach is cleaner in one sense; however, beware it assumes that your site will always be located at the root of the domain (ie, if it ever got moved to http://beta.rfahaiti.org/theapplication/ or something, then all those type of links would break).
I'm having problems with the paths to my first wordpress theme. Post images and stuff not related to css is located in wordpress_folder/blog-images/ and in index.php when I link to images I use this path: blog-images/img.jpg
The problem is now that when I want to link to the same image from another file (not index.php) in this case single.php wich displays one blog post, the correct path is now ../../../blog-images/img.jpg
This is causing problems in the includes like sidebar etc. sidebar.php works fine when called from index.php but the images path is changed if sidebar.php is called from single.php.
Does anyone know what's going on?
If you are creating these links from within php scripts, I would suggest using the site_url() function to get the URL for your wordpress install and then appending your images path to the end of that. If you are editing static theme files like css, then you should use /wordpress_folder/blog_images/img.jpg.
Something like <img src="<?php echo site_url() ?>/blog_images/img.jpg" /> should be sufficient from theme files.
The reason that paths are chaning is because if you are in wordpress_folder then the path blog_images/img.jpg resolves to wordpress_folder/blog_images/img.jpg but if you are on a post that has the url yoursite.com/wordpress_folder/2011/09/category/my_great_post then the path would resolve to wordpress_folder/2011/09/category/blog_images/img.jpg which is obviously incorrect.
For this reason you should try to use the absolute path or full URL so that no matter what file/folder/url you are linking from, the path will always be correct.
The main downside you may run into is that if you were to change the name of your wordpress folder, or remove it altogether, then you may need to make a lot of edits to reflect that. But in any case, you should put the / in front of your path so that it can be referenced the same from everywhere.
Also check out the site_url() reference page, it lists some other helpful functions at the bottom that may be useful to you.
I thought this was a little unclear from drew's answer, so I am adding a little bit more in a separate answer. His advice is sound and I agree with him.
If you prepend a url with a / then it will navigate based on your site url. Without the slash it uses relative navigation.
So here are some examples for www.mydomain.com
//always shows the image located at http://www.mydomain.com/myfolder/pic.png
//no matter what the url is
<img src="/myfolder/pic.png" />
//shows the image located relative to the current path
//if current url is http://www.mydomain.com/posts/ then the image will come from
//http://www.mydomain.com/posts/myfolder/pic.png
<img src="myfolder/pic.png" />
If you are creating links dynamically from php side then you will want to use site_url().
If you are creating links to your theme directory folder then you will want to use bloginfo('template_directory')