folder to save files that are retrieved with require in document tree - php

Question

I'm building a website based on php and i want to ask where to put files that are retrieved with a require statement, so that they can not be accessed from users with their browser.
(for example a php file that connects to my database)
EDIT actually i think the better way is to put them outside the public root because apache tutorial says htaccess will have a slowdown impact. it can be done with adding a ../
for example require("../myFile.php"); (At least this works in my server)
Best regards to all

Answer 1

That depends on the web server configuration. Usually (or at least in all cases I witnessed), you have a document root which cannot be accessed by users with their browser, with in there a folder containing all public material (often called htdocs, httpdocs, public_html or anything of the kind. Often, you can place your PHP include files in that root, and then require them using require("../include_file.php");
However, it depends on the configuration whether PHP can include files outside your public folder. If not, a .htaccess file is your best option.

Answer 2

If you place those files outside the document root of your webserver users cannot access these files with a browser.
If you use apache you can also place these files in a directory to which you do not allow access with a .htaccess file.
And as a last remark, if your files do not generate output, there is no way users can check the contents of the files.

Answer 3

If you mean source code then it is not visible for users, if you want hide folder contents use .htaccess directive Options -Indexes to hide files, if you can access php source your server configuration is wrong and it is not parsing php files.

Answer 4

You normally place them into a directory that is not accessible over the webserver (outside the document or web root). Sometimes called a "private" directory.
You then include/require the file from that path as PHP has still access to the files.
See also:
placing php script outside website root
disable access to included files - For a method if you're not able to place the files in a private directory.

Answer 5

Just make them secure with .htacces!
Here's a very clear tutorial for protecting files with a password. If you don't need direct access to the files per browser, or only your scripts need access, just block them completly by changing the code between
<Files xy>
change this bit here
</Files>
to
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
Then you won't need your htpassword file anymore either!

Answer 6

You need to put these files outside of public-facing folders on your web server. Most (all?) web hosts should have the capability to change the document root of the website.
For example, let's say that all of your files are served from the following directory on your host: /home/username/www/example.com/
This means that anything that resides inside that directory is visible to the internet. If you went to http://example.com/myfile.png it would serve the file at /home/username/www/example.com/myfile.png.
What you want to do is create a new directory called, for example, public which will serve your files, and point the document root there. After you've done that, the request for http://example.com/myfile.png will be served from /home/username/www/example.com/public/myfile.png (note the public directory here). Now, anything else that resides within the example.com directory won't be visible on your website. You can create a new directory called, for example, private where your sensitive include files will be stored.
So say you have two files: index.php, which serves your website, and sensitive.php which contains passwords and things of that nature. You would set those up like this:
/home/username/www/example.com/public/index.php
/home/username/www/example.com/private/sensitive.php
The index.php file is visible to the internet, but sensitive.php is not. To include sensitive.php, you just include the full file path:
require_once("/home/username/www/example/com/private/sensitive.php");
You can also set your application root (the root of your websites files, though not the root of the publicly accessible files) as a define, possibly in a config file somewhere, and use that, e.g.:
require_once(APP_ROOT . "sensitive.php");
If you can't change the document root, then what some frameworks do is use a define to note that the file shouldn't be executed directly. You create a define in any file you want as an entry point to your application, usually just index.php, like so:
if (!defined('SENSITIVE')) {
define('SENSITIVE', 'SENSITIVE');
}
Then, in any sensitive file, you check that it's been set, and exit if it hasn't, since that means the file is being executed directly, and not by your application:
if (!defined('SENSITIVE')) {
die("This file cannot be accessed directly.");
}
Also, make sure that your include files, when publicly accessible (and really, even if not), have a proper extension, such as .php, so that the web server knows to execute them as PHP files, rather than serving them as plain text. Some people use .inc to denote include files, but if the server doesn't recognize them as being handled by PHP, your code will be publicly visible to anyone who cares to look. That's not good! To prevent this, always name your files with a .php extension. If you want to use the .inc style to show your include files, consider using .inc.php instead.