Include php files when they are in different folders

Question

Most of my website is in my root directory. And In that directory there is "css", "functions", "images" folder. Everything works fine when I include php files within index.php or any other root file. It includes it fine and executes it fine.

But problem occurres when I made folder "blog". So this is totally new and separate root folder with CMS and its own "root" files. And I try to include css from main root directory or some php files from "functions" folder in main root directory, Everything breaks down. I know I have to include it as ../functions/myfile.com . But this files includes some other files so it just wont work properly and won't be able to include other files properly.

Is there any idea how to fix this problem?

Answer 1

You can get to the root from within each site using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . For testing ONLY you can echo out the path to make sure it's working, if you do it the right way. You NEVER want to show the local server paths for things like includes and requires.

Site 1

echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; //should be '/main_web_folder/';

Includes under site one would be at:

echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/includes/'; // should be '/main_web_folder/includes/';

Site 2

echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; //should be '/main_web_folder/blog/';

The actual code to access includes from site1 inside of site2 you would say:

include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/../includes/file_from_site_1.php');

It will only use the relative path of the file executing the query if you try to access it by excluding the document root and the root slash:

 //(not as fool-proof or non-platform specific)
 include('../includes/file_from_site_1.php');

Included paths have no place in code on the front end (live) of the site anywhere, and should be secured and used in production environments only .

Additionally for URLs on the site itself you can make them relative to the domain. Browsers will automatically fill in the rest because they know which page they are looking at. So instead of:

<a href='http://www.__domain__name__here__.com/contact/'>Contact</a>

You should use:

<a href='/contact/'>Contact</a>

For good SEO you'll want to make sure that the URLs for the blog do not exist in the other domain, otherwise it may be marked as a duplicate site. With that being said you might also want to add a line to your robots.txt file for ONLY site1 :

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/

Other possibilities:

Look up your IP address and include this snippet of code:

function is_dev(){
  //use the external IP from Google.
  //If you're hosting locally it's 127.0.01 unless you've changed it.
  $ip_address='xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx';

  if ($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']==$ip_address){
     return true;
  } else {
     return false;
  } 
}

if(is_dev()){
    echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];       
}

Remember if your ISP changes your IP , as in you have a DCHP Dynamic IP, you'll need to change the IP in that file to see the results. I would put that file in an include, then require it on pages for debugging.

If you're okay with modern methods like using the browser console log you could do this instead and view it in the browser's debugging interface:

if(is_dev()){
    echo "<script>".PHP_EOL;
    echo "console.log('".$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."');".PHP_EOL;
    echo "</script>".PHP_EOL;       
}

Answer 2

If I understand you correctly, You have two folders, one houses your php script that you want to include into a file that is in another folder?

If this is the case, you just have to follow the trail the right way. Let's assume your folders are set up like this:

root
    includes
        php_scripts
            script.php
    blog
        content
            index.php

If this is the proposed folder structure, and you are trying to include the "Script.php" file into your "index.php" folder, you need to include it this way:

include("../../../includes/php_scripts/script.php");

The way I do it is visual. I put my mouse pointer on the index.php (looking at the file structure), then every time I go UP a folder, I type another "../" Then you have to make sure you go UP the folder structure ABOVE the folders that you want to start going DOWN into. After that, it's just normal folder hierarchy.

Answer 3

None of the above answers fixed this issue for me. I did it as following (Laravel with Ubuntu server):

<?php
     $footerFile = '/var/www/website/main/resources/views/emails/elements/emailfooter.blade.php';
     include($footerFile);
?>

Answer 4

i had the same issue and found a code on https://css-tricks.com/php-include-from-root/ that fixed it

 <?php $path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; $path.= "/common/header.php"; include_once($path); ?>

Answer 5

Try to never use relative paths. Use a generic include where you assign the DocumentRoot server variable to a global variable, and construct absolute paths from there. Alternatively, for larger projects, consider implementing a PSR-0 SPL autoloader.