CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phppathincluderelative-path
Mobaz
Mobaz

Reputation: 595

PHP 'include' issue - cannot seem to get include to work correctly

I'm having a spot of bother with php includes. I have the following file structure

htdocs

php_includes

within the db_conx.php file i've creates a variable $number = 10; for testing.

The db_conx file is included in the check_user_status.php file with the following code:

include_once("db_conx.php");

and that is working fine - i.e. i can echo $number and get 10.

However, I'm including the check_user_status.php file at the top of login.php with this code:

include_once("php_includes/db_conx.php");

and on this page I'm unable to echo out $number on this page (check_user_status.php).

I'm going to need this script included in many pages (since it checks whether the user is logged in or not). Am I doing something strange with the paths?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 126

Answers (3)

Jacob S
Jacob S

Reputation: 1703

If your file structure is correct, assuming that php_includes is NOT a directory within htdocs, you would need to do:

include_once("../php_includes/db_conx.php");

Upvotes: 0

Orangepill
Orangepill

Reputation: 24645

For relative paths you need to do this.

include_once("../php_includes/db_conx.php");

To break this down.

Your Current working directory is initially going to be htdocs/ if your hit that file in your browser.

the .. back you up one directory level (so the directory that contains both htdocs and php_includes)

then you want to follow down php_includes to get to db_conx.php.

This will become a problem when you do a file in a subdirectory. Assuming you and a page2.php to a htdocs/subpages/

Now if we follow those same steps we are not going to arrive at the same location.

A better approach is to get the path relative to an absolute location. I like using the document root (htdocs in your case), so: 

 include($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]."/../php_includes/db_conx.php");

will refer to the same place on the file system regardless of where it is used.

Upvotes: 2

Fabio
Fabio

Reputation: 23480

I think you can use __DIR__ magic constant

The directory of the file. If used inside an include, the directory of the included file is returned. This is equivalent to dirname(FILE). This directory name does not have a trailing slash unless it is the root directory. (Added in PHP 5.3.0.)

This will help you with nested included files, infact the file path will be always set automatically and you don't have to deal with absolute paths.

Upvotes: 0

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