I recently did a fresh install of Lumen framework and started building a site from it. Yes I know lumen is designed only for APIs but please help me out with this.
I have placed all my views inside /resources/views and my templates inside /resources/views/templates.
Now since I had to place [css/js/images] somewhere, I thought placing all of that in public/assets/[css/js/images] would be nice.
Now in my layout when I am trying to include css - I use something like this -
<link href="{{ url('assets/css/something.css') }}">
and it works giving an output of something like this -
<link href="localhost/assets/css/something.css">
same thing works for js also but it gets strange when I try to include images. For including an image I write something like -
<img src ="{{ url('assets/images/someimage.jpg') }}"
and when I view page source, output is as I expect it to be -
<img src="localhost/assets/images/someimage.jpg">
but my console fires 404 not found errors stating someimage.jpg not found. And when I crosscheck by inspecting the image's parent, the Url is totally different soemthing like this -
<img src="localhost/images/someimage.jpg">
See, automatically omitting 'assets' from image url and resulting in 404, but I can see correct url when I view page source.
Things I tried to resolve the issue -
Cleared cache and reloaded the page.
Tried using asset() instead of url() but prototype of that was removed from lumen.
Pull out [css/js/images] folder from assets and pasted them in parent i.e. public. This worked but then the question is why did the previous setup worked find for both css and js and caused problem only with images ?
My other questions are -
1. How can the url in page source be different from the one being rendered ? Just to mention in my case the url in page source worked and displayed image but since the url being renderred omitted 'assets' from path hence resulted in 404.
2. Is there any other good way to include these assets in views. If yes then please also mention where to put them ?
Attaching some images/code for reference.
Output of rendered page showing 404 errors for images but none for css.
Output of view page source windows showing asset included in image path
No clue if this is right, but I believe you actually need to put an image stream inside that URL. Now the server is trying to retrieve some byte encoded object that isn't there.
I have no idea if it's the same case for you, but I've had many instances where I had to put in image streams instead of URLs, which I've solved this way using this library:
Routes.php
/**
* Image handling routes.
* These make sure images actually are images instead of bytecode
*/
Route::get('organization/logo/{logo}', function($logo) {
$file = Image::make(Storage::disk('logo-image')->get($logo));
return $file->response();
});
View
<img src="{{ asset('organization/logo/' . $organization->logo_path) }}" alt="">
I might be completely off, but I recognize what's happening with your app and this took care of the issues when I implemented it.
Check your web server configuration. It sounds like you have some type of redirect setup that redirects assets/images/* to just images/*.
As a simple test, open your "Network" tab and navigate your browser to http://samplelumena.local/assets/images/footer1.jpg. I'm guessing the Network trace will show a 30x (301, 302, etc.) to http://samplelumena.local/images/footer1.jpg, followed by the 404 for that url.
So, I am working on a website with backend for two customers. Both will have different URLs. I had a problem with Javascript links (ajax calls using url:) but that was solved using a global :
var SiteURL='<?php echo base_url();?>';
and append it to calls as necessary. The problem is when my paths go deeper e.g. website.com/book/sheet/2
the relative links would continue from 2/
While I am done with the JS, I am really lost on the CSS. I don't want to give absolute path, e.g. for background-image:url() as it will change with new customers.
Any way I can make use of base_url() or any other function?
#DFriend: that somehow failed for mine as it looked for images folder in css...Firebug showed "http://localhost/samplestud/assets/css/images/listicons/arrow_double.png"
Simple "../images" seems to have fixed it pretty well. Thanks fellas.
UPDATE 1: to have a clear view of what is happening, you can download a snippet of the script from here.
I am working in a new website that has the same header, footer in all PHP pages.
In the header I am referencing to other common files in website that like .css, .js, functions, classes, db connection, and etc.
for instance, the default.css is in /common/stylesheets/
and my header.php and footer.php are in /common/html/ folder
so my header.php file is something like this
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Header</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="common/stylesheets/default.css">
</head>
<body>
In my website index.php I included the header <?php include('common/html/header.php'); ?> and this is working fine... BUT the problems appear when I include the header in other php pages within other directories or sub directories e.g. /pages/admin/dashboard.php, everything messed up and that page no more linked to the default.css file.
So, what I am looking for is a method or logic where I reference to these common files and folders in every PHP page no matter its location; e.g. site root, a directory in the site root, or a sub-directory... etc...
here is an image of my website root
Your help is highly appreciated...
P.S. I've tried to use some superglobals variables such as $_SERVER[''] in config.inc.php file to define the paths, then I included that file in the header.php. BUT I couldn't figure out which one will dynamically keep referencing to those common folders and files no mater where the PHP page is.
UPDATE 1: to have a clear view of what is happening, you can download a snippet of the script from here.
It is usually a good idea to use fully qualified or absolute URLs to reference your assets:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.sitenamecom/some/path/to/common/stylesheets/default.css">
Since there are many places where you need the proper URL base to reach the different files, you could define a constant having the web root:
define('WEB_ROOT', 'http://www.sitename.com');
Then you could define other constants to have access to the different parts of the system:
define('WEB_ASSETS', WEB_ROOT . '/common');
So for the style sheet link in your header.php it would be:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo WEB_ASSETS; ?>/stylesheets/default.css">
To include files the principle is the same only that in this case you don't work with URLs but with file system's paths. There's not really a dynamic way of solving this, it all goes down to absolute paths.
The problem here is that the tree structure in your local development environment might (and surely won't) match that of your server. So in the configuration file, which is located in your application's root you could define:
define('APP_ROOT', dirname(__FILE__));
Then lets use the admin/index.php file as example:
include '../../../config.inc.php';
include APP_ROOT . '/sitename/common/html/header.php';
The tricky part here is including the configuration. Since, until you do that the APP_ROOT won't be available, relative paths are needed to reach it, and it isn't possible to escape this one; unless you can fully trust the preferred absolute form:
include '/some/path/to/config.inc.php';
Having that leading slash, as I said before, will be a problem if the application is tested in different environments because it is rarely the case that some/path/to is always the same.
This is the usual issue with structures that aren't using index.php for centralization. Maybe you can try adding another include that defines your directories as pseudo-constant and prepending them to your asset urls.
Or you can parse the request url on how deep it is and automatically prepend the needed ../ levels to your assets urls. I've done this for one of my past projects.
I got to warn you though, it's better to solve the root of the issue (lack of centralization) than adding workarounds. It will surely come back to haunt you sooner than you think.
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is likely what you are looking for.
<?php
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/sitename/common/html/header.php");
This should work from any directory. If you want it to be a little more dynamic than typing out "sitename", you can do this:
<?php
$sitename = explode("/", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/" . $sitename[1] . "/common/html/header.php");
You need to Change your <link rel="stylesheet" href="common/stylesheets/default.css"> to <link rel="stylesheet" href="../../common/stylesheets/default.css">
here is a simple modification in php.ini to include footer.php and header.php for each script
auto_append_file=ABSOLUTE_PATH/footer.php
auto_prepend_file=ABSOLUTE_PATH/header.php
restart your Apache if you are running under easyPhp, xampp,....
Warning : This configuration will be applied in all projects that are executed with the modified PHP
Try <link rel="stylesheet" href="/common/stylesheets/default.css">
Note the leading slash... This directs server to the document root.
I tried it and it works.
My tree:
/var/www/html/
subdir/
body.php
layout/
header.php
footer.php
css/
style.css
header.php
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css">
</head>
<body>
<p>Header.</p>
<hr>
body.php
<?php
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/layout/header.php');
echo "Body.<br>";
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/layout/footer.php');
?>
footer.php
</body>
</html>
style.css
body {
color: red;
}
Viewing http://localhost/subdir/body.php in the browser, I get the expected result: "Header" and "Body" are colored red.
I would store the document root of your website in some define:
define('DOCROOT', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']);
Do this in a PHP file that you include everywhere, preferably in some bootstrap PHP file.
Then you need to prepend your paths with this in your include lines:
<?php include(DOCROOT . "/common/html/header.php"); ?>
Have you also looked at include_once?
Have you tried PHP's set_include_path ?
You can add numerous paths in one set_include_path separating them with a ' :'.
set_include_path('/home/mysite/includes1:/home/mysite/includes2').
PHP.net -> set_include_path
Even without moving to a full front controller (and MVC) setup (which would be good), you are going to save yourself a lot of headaches if you introduce a simple bootstrap-like file.
It's not going to be perfect with your current setup, as your files are including different parts of your system (ie header.php) in various places and sub folders.
Having header load the first output things - i.e. doctype, head and head links etc - is fine in your basic structure, but you have now run into constraints which you cannot work around without making your header.php messy, or including numerous other files before header.php.
In a more solid framework design, the html and doctype outputs are after a lot of other things have been initiated and loaded, to allow control over said html and doctype.
But to help in your case, just load the bootstrap before anything else is loaded/included.
Bootstrap
The bootstrap will load shared resources, and common used data and paths (etc) throughout your application.
You can then add anything else in the bootstrap in the future, if you find a scenario.
A simple example of something in your bootstrap:
bootstrap.php (MUST reside in your root web folder for following constant to work)
// Define root folder
define ('FOLDER_ROOT', __DIR__);
Then throughout your app you can reference that constant (FOLDER_ROOT) to determine the root folder, and work through subfolders as required.
So, using your current setup:
index.php (I presume is in root folder)
include('bootstrap.php');
include(FOLDER_ROOT.'/common/html/header.php');
// Everything else
So then in your bootstrap you can set other things, such as define the default doctype or character encoding, setup error management.
Although you would usually set things like doctype after bootstrap, in a class, the router, some controller, or even a template.
But as you are using common file includes rather than using a more conventional framework design pattern, this way will at least save you some headaches now, and possibly further down the line.
So again in the bootstrap.php:
// Define root folder
define ('FOLDER_ROOT', __DIR__);
// Define CSS folder using root folder constant above
define ('FOLDER_CSS', FOLDER_ROOT.'/common/stylesheets/');
Then in header.php:
echo '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="'.FOLDER_CSS.'default.css">';
Sub Folders (ie /admin)
Now in sub folders, such as /pages/admin/dashboard.php etc, you don't have access to these constants, because you are loading your header files and other template like things all separately "across your application".
So it becomes a battle to set your root folder, plus you are now managing it all twice!
You could try loading the root bootstrap file within your admin folder.
So in dashboard.php, something like:
include('/bootstrap.php');
// OR (more likely)
include('../../bootstrap.php');
But this is becoming messy, calling bootstrap in different places, having to call it differently too.
It's not ideal, but it is do-able, in that if you get the bootstrap loaded within your admin area, then you have the root path setup in admin area and so managing other files from your admin files should be easier.
You could try using a new admin specific bootstrap file, eg in /pages/admin/, have adminBootstrap.php.
But then you're setting two different constants for root, and likely more constants to get to your common and css files and folders. It's easy setting your web root path in a file that is in the web root path, and can be tricky (sometimes) setting web root path from another folder.
Stylesheets
You mentioned that using /common/stylesheets/defaults.css (with a preceding slash) doesn't work and causes the source code to show localhost/common/stylesheets/defaults.css.
This would possibly indicate you need to configure your DocumentRoot.
On Linux it's in /etc/apache2/sites-available/, then either the default file, or if you configured your own virtual sites then go into each one.
What is your DocumentRoot set as?
Although if you get the bootstrap working within the admin area this problem might go away, using the constant FOLDER_CSS.
Folder Structure
I also think you should tidy up your folders, as you seem to have separated things into illogical folder names (perhaps logical to you, but will it be when you learn more and come back to it in a year, or another dev tries to use it?).
E.G. I would not know what on earth the folder html is going to contain, as HTML is a protocol, and ultimately your application will serve HTML.
Have a little read into MVC. Don't go into depth as it's a lot of reading/learning, but if you grasp the basics, you can then tidy up your own structure to create your own logical separation of presentation from business a little more logically than it is now.
Front Controller
If instead of using include files, you had a framework, which loads bootstrap and application wide configs, error management, other stuff, then when you come to load your HTML (your header, footer etc), they will have all this application (root folder constants etc) pre-loaded regardless of which sub folder you are trying to load web pages from.
However as you are doing it, you are instead including these things manually whenever you need them in different files, in sub folders.
While you are introducing a small presence of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) by having the doctype, head, etc in include files and re-using them, you are still having to repeat yourself with those include files as you re-use them wherever you need them.
Also, what if you wanted to re-style admin differently to the main site? You'd have to include a different header file or a different stylesheet, or just put all code in the same stylesheet.
I'm waffling, but hopefully I'm being clear, and you can see why using header includes is only a small step in the right direction and for small sites. I'm sure you progressed naturally to using those include files from typing out the head/doctype etc in every file.
However now you are trying to break out into other directions, as with your admin area, you can see the constraints and including those same files is becoming harder to manage as your entire application grows.
So if you had a front controller type setup, within your dashboard.php you would have been able to simply used the constants set in the root bootstrap file, and any other sub folder which would be accessed after the core application is loaded.
EG (if using front controller like pattern)
dashboard.php:
include(FOLDER_ROOT.'/common/html/header.php');
I know I've bashed on about front controller already, but a few years back I was at the stage you are now, and moved from having all my files including the header.php, then the page content, then including footer.php, etc, and I instead started using a front controller.
It's really sooo much better!
It is a fair learning curve (with learning curves in all sorts of directions and methods, requirements, etc) and as such will leave it up to you if you want to go further into that.
I now have my own basic MVC front controller system, which I just simply plonk a new file for a new website page into the view/pages folder, and the page can be used immediately in the browser (the system does everything else).
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')
i am new to a php site, only familiar with .net web forms sites.
i can't figure out how routing is working on this php site.
www.oursite.com/suggestions.php is to suggestions.php
www.oursite.com/suggestions also loads the php fine
www.oursite.com/suggestions/ loads the php, but no css is applied
www.oursite.com/suggestions/anything - anything that comes after the '/' is ignored and suggestions is loaded without css. so oursite.com/suggestions////// works, as does oursite.com/suggestions/2/2/2/2/whatever
i have searched but not found any good explanation on how this is working. can someone explain or provide a good resource?
thank you.
This is most certainly done using Mod_Rewrite, an Apache extension. You'll probably find a file called .htaccess in the public root, in which these rewriting rules are defined.
DouweM has the right answer as far as the friendly urls are concerned.
As for the CSS, it is probably because you are using relative URLs in your link tags:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="site.css"/>
Change those to absolute URLs and it should solve that problem:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/site.css"/>
The reason for this is that the browser makes the request for the CSS based on the directory it thinks it is in, even though your URL rewriting is changing that. So, if the url is http://mysite.com/suggestions/ and you are using relative urls, the browser will request the css as http://mysite.com/suggestions/site.css which of course doesn't exist.
www.oursite.com/suggestions.php is to suggestions.php
www.oursite.com/suggestions also loads the php fine
You probably have a .htaccess file that first checks whether or not a file of that name exists, and if it does serves it, then, if it doesn't, tries to route it to a php script.
www.oursite.com/suggestions/ loads the php, but no css is applied
The / means your browser considers '/suggestions/' a directory. If suggestions.php outputs HTML that contains a relative <link> to a stylesheet, e.g. <link href="style.css">, your browser will request www.oursite.com/suggestions/style.css, rather than www.oursite.com/style.css as in the previous two cases.
www.oursite.com/suggestions/anything
Same as the previous case, your browser will request the wrong css file, since it considers '/suggestions/' a directory. (For a potential fix, take a look at Eric Petroelje's answer.)
As DouweM said, though, your best bet is to look directly at your .htaccess file and figure out what it does.