Starting off right with file includes

PHP
1

Hello!

On my first PHP project, I coded all of my include/require files as:

require_once(../../main/restrict_access_index.php');

It’s kind of a pain and not super clear coding in my opinion. Diving into my second PHP project, I was hoping to use the $_SERVER global variable and DOCUMENT_ROOT as below:

require_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"].'/main/restrict_access_index.php');

Is this better coding practice or might there be another solution that I’m not aware of?

Thank you,

Eric

2

Personally, I much prefer that solution, as you can then use the same link anywhere without having to worry about relative paths.

3

Thanks so much for the quick reply!

-Eric

4

Ralph,

I’ve now given the whole $_SERVER[“DOCUMENT_ROOT”] some thought and now think that there may be one small issue. Let’s say I develop the site for www.thebestsiteever.com. However, it turns out that it needs to be all moved to a subdirectory (this is actually a possibility for the project), so that all of my files now reside in www.thebestsiteever.com/thebestfolderever/. If this does happen, wouldn’t I have to change all of my $_SERVER[“DOCUMENT_ROOT”] to reflect this with the additional layer? And, if this is the case, might there be a more “flexible” solution?

Thanks again…

5

How about this?


require_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . $SITE_DIR . '/main/restrict_access_index.php');

Just set a global $SITE_DIR (or whatever name you like) to an empty string. If/when the site moves, simple modify that global variable!

6

:slight_smile:

Thank you…

7

I recently started using constants for this. In my configuration file i declare constants with the right paths. If site moves I change soms constants.
But I don’t know If this is good practise