Relative path to CSS file?

Question

Is there a way to get CakePHP's css method to emit a path relative to the current document?

I.e., using this code:

$this->Html->css('tutorial');

Instead of generating

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/Tutorial/css/tutorial.css" />

it would instead generate something like

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../css/tutorial.css" />

I know this is goofy, but I'm looking to create something that can be retrieved using wget, then viewed offline. I've told CakePHP to handle .html extensions (using Router::parseExtensions('html');), then set up routes to the controller/action that look like a directory structure for static HTML files. I'm looking for a way to generate a URL that's relative to the page so that when I save the files (using wget) they'll still work when read from the hard drive.

As thaJeztah points out below, this isn't possible in CakePHP. Because CakePHP is abstractly mapping URLs to controllers & actions it does't really have any notion of 'serving a file' anymore (except in the /pages/subdirs, etc) so the only thing that makes sense for CakePHP is to provide a URL that starts at the root & works down to the .CSS files. (Much thanks to thaJeztah for pointing this out!)

Huh. URLs starting with "/" are, apparently, relative. I was thinking of "relative to the current document" — MikeTheTall
– MikeTheTall, Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 22:24

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:25:51Z

2

From the API

If $path is prefixed with '/', the path will be relative to the webroot of your application. Otherwise, the path will be relative to your CSS path

So you could start the path with a / and then point from there, that way you don't need to go backwards in directories.

Credit to this answer for pointing this out

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:25

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answered Mar 30, 2013 at 22:25

What have you tried

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9 Comments

MikeTheTall Over a year ago

I'm looking for a path relative to the document (instead of being relative to the webroot folder, or the CSS path)

What have you tried Over a year ago

I understand, but my thinking was that you can just type out the path relative to the webroot instead of having to go back in directories from the CSS folder

MikeTheTall Over a year ago

I know this is goofy, but I'm looking to create something that can be retrieved using wget, then viewed offline. So it needs to be relative to the document.

MikeTheTall Over a year ago

Also - thank you for the suggestion! I greatly appreciate your help with this! :)

thaJeztah Over a year ago

The reason for using 'absolute' paths (i.e. relative to the 'root') is that otherwise the CSS paths would become invalid if you added more parameters to your URL, for example, for this request ; /controller/action/1 the path should be ../../css/styles.css. However, for this request: /controller/action/1/page:2/sort:name/, the path to the CSS would have to be ../../../../../css/styles.css. Using 'absolute' URLs is therefore the preferred way, making sure that the paths always work properly

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MikeTheTall · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-03 23:11:13Z

0

As a side-note, you can actually get a copy of a website using the "wget" command. (There's even a nice "Visual WGet" for Windows, which presents a friendly GUI for all the command line options). wget will download all the files and (if you use the -k / --convert-links option) will fix up all the links to be relative (to each document) so that they work offline.

It's important to wait till wget completely finishes, as wget does this weird two-phase thing where it FIRST gets all the files and THEN goes back and fixes up the links

answered Apr 3, 2013 at 23:11

MikeTheTall

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