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I have a bit of a mess of a file system here at work, and trying to code around it is driving me crazy. Hopefully someone here can help. First, some background.

We have multiple domains on two different servers (one is Windows, the other Linux). The goal is to build a form that can be included on any of the domains. We already have this by having two copies of the form, one on each of the servers, and using server absolute paths to include the form.php file (include "/etc/www/formhostingdomain/form.php"; and include "D:\www\formhostingdomain2\form.php" for example). Like I said, this part works.

Now where I am getting into problems is that the form.php file needs to dynamically include some more files from the same folder as it is in. I've tried relative references, as well as server absolute paths for this, but I can't seem to get it working. A single server absolute include inside of form.php (such as include 'D:\www\formhostingdomain2\formextras.php';) works, but if I try something like

$server_path = "D:\\www\\formhostingdomain2\\";
include $server_path."formextras.php";

then I can't get it to include properly. I need to be able to move the server path into a single variable because there are too many includes throughout the file to be maintainable otherwise. I've tried playing with single quotes vs double quotes, and single, double, and even quadruple backslashes, as well as forward slashes, all to no avail. I've also read the documentation at http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php but that didn't shine any light on the situation for me. I'm sure there's just something subtle I'm missing.

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  • Will be help, if you describe how your directory structure right now. Commented Jul 29, 2011 at 17:15

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This aught to solve your problem:

include dirname(__FILE__)."/formextras.php";

__FILE__ is a magic constant including the full file name and path of the current file. dirname sets the path up so it's now the exact same as form.php (without you needing to know where form.php currently is)... from here you can go up (..) or down (include/) the tree, or simply reference another file in the same folder.

It's worth noting though, that by default an include/require is always relative to the currently executing page. If form.php is directly accessed (not included by another page) then you can just say include "formextras.php"; which means formextras.php has to be in the same directory or include "includes/formextras.php"; meaning formextras.php is in the subdirectory includes from form.php.

This is a blessing and a curse, if you have index.php that includes form.php which then includes formextras.php then a relative include within form.php is from index.php not form.php... dirname(__FILE__) gets around this.

Update PHP 5.3+

As you pointed out, PHP 5.3 introduced a new magic constant called __DIR__ which reports the same as dirname(__FILE__)... if you can guarantee 5.3 is installed everywhere it's a cleaner solution.

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What testing I've been able to do so far seems to point to this as working well. The only thing I had to change was to make it include dirname(__FILE__)."/formextras.php"; (note the extra slash in the filename) since the last folder separator wasn't showing up on its own. I'll report back on Monday when I can do a more thorough test if this did indeed solve all my problems.
This worked wonderfully. I do want to add for anyone else reading this that php 5.3 also has a DIR magic constant which is the same as dirname(FILE).
Nice point @Mike, __DIR__ is a cleaner solution if you can guarantee PHP 5.3+ everywhere.

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