• PHP – absolute file paths in HTML

    WinMan Member November 28, 2016 at 3:55 pm

    Hi, I know how to create absolute filepaths in PHP, but do I need to do the same thing when linking to files in HTML?

    PHP:

    require_once dirname(__FILE__).'/includes/config.inc.php';

    HTML:

    When I mess around with the HTML above e.g. by duplicating the dirnames e.g. dirname(dirname(__FILE__))?>"/includes/config.inc.php>" I still get to config.inc.php.

    Also, are the backslashes for a new folder performed in the PHP or the HTML?

    #11177
  • Abhey Member November 28, 2016 at 3:56 pm

    For starters, files get loaded differently in PHP (From the webserver) and HTML (From the clients computer). When you try to include a file through PHP, you will be talking to your webserver locally. This means that the entire disk is accessable (or so to say). When you’re trying to use dirname(__FILE__) (__DIR__ is available since PHP 5.3) the function will return the path of the file from the disk. It would look something like this on linux ‘ /home/user/public_html/ ‘. When an user visits your website in a webbrowser, all the files get loaded relatively from the URL.

    So let’s take your link and see what happens:
    The link would point to something like: ‘/home/user/public_html/includes/config.php’. (Since that’s what the function dirname returned.
    This will make the web browser believe that it needs to go to

    http://example.com/home/user/public_html/includes/config.php

    Which, of course, cannot be found.

    Now that you know this, it is easy to conclude what to point the link to. It would be /includes/config.php. As that is what the location of the file is relatively to the URL.

    #11178
  • Adelaid Member November 28, 2016 at 3:56 pm

    So all file locations which require server-side manipulation can be written in the script using functions like dirname(__FILE__)./includes/config.php but any links in the html should avoid these kind of absolute paths embedded into them via PHP tags and should just refer to the file link relatively e.g. /includes/config.php.

    #11179
  • SapnaVishwas Member November 28, 2016 at 3:56 pm

    You could refer to the base url of your website instead of an absolute directory
    #11180
Viewing 3 reply threads
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.