file_exists() can't find file when hosted online

Question

The code works perfectly on my local host (by xampp) but this problem started when I moved it to online host.

I have a driver php code that naviagte to the page if it finds it in folder pages or techPosts the problem is that I can load some files by file_exists() but can't load the others?

The driver code is located in index.php in the root of my host in /public_html

<?php

include_once "config.php";
include "functions.php";

$db = db_connection();

$page = isset($_GET['p']) ? $_GET['p'] : 'home';

include_once './views/_header.php';

if (file_exists("./pages/{$page}.php")) { //for the normal pages
    include "./pages/{$page}.php";
} elseif (file_exists("./techPosts/{$page}.php")) { //for the story of posts
    include "./techPosts/{$page}.php";
} else {
    include './pages/404.php';
}
include_once "./views/_footer.php";

db_close($db);

and here is the folder tree for my files

public_html/
    index.php
    pages/
        Forall_Posts.php
        home.php
        A.php
        B.php
        C.php
        D.php
        E.php
        F.php
    techPosts/
        test.php

in home.php it loads the whole content of my page by this

<?php require_once './pages/B.php' ?>

<?php require_once './pages/C.php'; ?>

<div id="aboutSection">
    <hr class="page-break" data-aos="zoom-out">
    <?php require_once './pages/D.php'; ?>
</div>

<hr class="page-break" data-aos="zoom-out">
<?php require_once './pages/E.php'; ?>

<hr class="page-break" data-aos="zoom-out">
<?php require_once './pages/F.php'; ?>

What I tested

1.Reference by absolute path using __DIR__

in index.php

if (file_exists(__DIR__."/pages/{$page}.php")) { //for the normal pages
    include __DIR__."/pages/{$page}.php";

same, it can't load the page.

2.Change ternary operator to land on Forall_Posts instead of home

$page = isset($_GET['p']) ? $_GET['p'] : 'Forall_Posts';

it lands on it, so it means that the file can be found.

Solution but not best one

Add a specific if condition just for Forall_Posts.php

if (file_exists("./pages/{$page}.php")) { //for the normal pages
    debug_to_console("First if condition");
    include "./pages/{$page}.php";
} elseif (file_exists("./pages/Forall_Posts.php")) { //only to this page
    debug_to_console("Second if condition");
    include "./pages/Forall_Posts.php";
} elseif (file_exists("./techPosts/{$page}.php")) { //for the story of posts
    include "./techPosts/{$page}.php";
} else {
    include './pages/404.php';
}

It can find Forall_Posts.php now, but when I try with A.php it goes to Forall_Posts.php and I have output that says "Second if condition" .

At this point I don't understand anything, why it didn't go to the else statemenet and just show the 404.php page but go to the specific if condition and skip the first one?

Answer 1

did you try changing reference one of the

<?php require_once './pages/E.php'; ?>

to

<?php require_once './pages/Forall_Posts.php.php'; ?>```

Answer 2

you do not need this "../" or "./" when you want to fetch content from a folder that is NOT from the "back" directory, let's consider the index.php and you want to include E.php you can simply write include_once("pages/E.php");