CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpinclude
jon
jon

Reputation: 6241

Problem getting PHP include working with files in different folders

I'm a total PHP noob and am using a pretty simple PHP include: 

<?php include("~head.php"); ?>

to do a bit of templating for a website (to achieve common headers, footers, menus for all my pages).

It's working great for files that are in the same directory but when I reference a file outside of a directory, like so:

<?php include("../~head.php"); ?>

However, it simply doesn't seem to be finding the file as the header is clearly not being pulled into the markup.

Conversely, if I reference the file with a full url, e.g.

<?php include("http://example.com/~head.php"); ?>

I get the following error code on my page. 

Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/content/65/7392565/html/bikini/angela_bikini.php on line 1

Warning: include(http://example.com/~head.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/content/65/7392565/html/products/product_a.php on line 1

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://example.com/~head.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php') in /home/content/65/7392565/html/products/product_a.php on line 1

Strangely, the "../file.php" syntax works for non-header files (e.g. the include I'm using for the menu).

As such code's gotten to be a bit of a fragmented mess and is difficult to maintain changes across all the different pages. Any thoughts or solutions would be very much appreciated. I really am a noob tho so I probably won't be able to wrap my head around anything too fancy. : )

Thanks for your time.

Jon

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4951

Answers (2)

Michael Berkowski
Michael Berkowski

Reputation: 270599

Rather than using only the ../ to get the directory above, a construct like this will create the full filepath:

// Assuming you are including from the root
$application_path = dirname(__FILE__);
include("$application_path/../header.php);

Typically I'll do this by defining a constant, rather than using a variable.

define('APP_PATH', dirname(__FILE__));

Use this as:

// Assuming you are including at the file root:
define('APP_PATH', dirname(__FILE__));
include(APP_PATH . "/include/head.php");

// Assuming you are including from /include (one directory in)
// append a "/../" onto the end to indicate that the application
// root is one directory up from the currently executing file.
define('APP_PATH', dirname(__FILE__) . "/../");
include(APP_PATH . "somefile_at_the_root.php");

Upvotes: 7

Pit
Pit

Reputation: 4046

You have to be careful with the tilde! Under UNIX-like operating systems, the tilde is a shortcut to your home directory. If maybe the Apache server runs under the account www, your file-reference could be interpreted like this:

/home/www/head.php

And for the approach of using the full URL, the error says all:

URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration

Ignoring that it isn't best practice to use full URLs (because your folder structure could change etc.), you have to enable allow_url_include in your php.ini (see PHP.net).

If you really want to have your important files on top, you could use the underscore _.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions