Access to files outside of the public folder

Question

For security reasons I want to have all my connection files to the DB and login files in a folder out of the root directory. Like this:

Project:
       includes:
            conncect.php
            process_login.php
       general_files:
            index.php

In my index.php i have the following.

<form action="../includes/process_login.php" method="post" name="login_form">
      [...]
</form>

The problem is that when i try to submit that form i get an error that says that:

 The requested URL /includes/process_login.php was not found on this server.

Does anyone knows a way to do what i want to do?

Answer 1

As seen here : "to be safe, you should move the include files outside document root, thus making it impossible for the web server to serve them directly." However, to access them, you can use a full path, like so:

include('/home/xx/xx/domains/mydomain/webroot/file-to-include.php');

As seen here .

Answer 2

It appears that your document root is <Project>/general_files , and if that's the case, then your process_login.php file is outside of the public web folder.

You have two options:

1) Move process_login.php to the general_files/ directory and update the action attribute accordingly:

Project:
   includes:
        conncect.php
   general_files:
        index.php
        process_login.php

2) Or add a new PHP file (eg, new_login.php ) to general_files/ that includes process_login.php , and set your form's action attribute to this file:

Project:
   includes:
        conncect.php
        process_login.php
   general_files:
        index.php
        new_login.php