Absolute URLs that will work on local (MAMP) and live server

Question

trying to sort out a way that i can develop a version of my website on my local machine and then upload the files to the live site. The issue is, i want the local site to be completely dependant on itself and there for the css links, the includes etc need to be linking to the local folders.

I use a file called init.php which is in the root of the web folder and this is included into every page. In this init, i include all the stylesheets, jquery and other includes.

If i didnt have any sub folders on my website i would simply use this init.php included on every page and then simply do e.g. css/main.css and include 'includes/header.php' etc.

The problem is that i have folders in my website and still wish to just use the one init.php file that is in the root. However, I need this file to be included and also link to the css files etc that are also in the same place.

The folder structure would be:

root
    init.php
    databaseconn.php
    /css/
        main.css
    /settings/
        user_profile.php

If i include the init.php file in the user_profile.php page, the links to the other files will not work. Currently i am including the init.php onto the user_profile.php pages by denoting a double period (../)

The question is how can i always make the files linked in the init.php file always link to the same correct place no matter what folder i am in, but also whilst not being affected when i move the website files to my live host?

I have tried DIR and document root etc but when used per say as:

<?php define( 'BASE_PATH', __DIR__.'/' ); ?>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php echo BASE_PATH; ?>css/main.css">

This (on MAMP) gives me this URL:

/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/website/css/main.css

Which ofcourse wont work.

How can i do this correctly? I dont want to force the http: part niether incase i get SLL in the future.

Any help would be great!

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 14 '14 at 13:07

1

You can use base href tag for this one.

Example code:

<?php
  $baseHref = ($isDevelopment ? '//localhost/site/' : '//www.site.com/');
?>
<html>
  <head>
    <base href="<?php echo $baseHref; ?>" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/main.css" />
  </head>

Edit: of course you have to define if you're in dev or prod server in your config / init somewhere.

answered Jul 14 '14 at 13:07

artuc

913
11
20

Thanks, ill test that soon. I currently do something similar with the DB connection. I use a different connection as i still use the live database info when working on localhost. I shall see if i can integrate the switch over with that. – Lovelock Jul 14 '14 at 13:11
just tested this and works fine for the link tags etc. But what about php includes? – Lovelock Jul 14 '14 at 19:41

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

I would go with $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] which captures your domain name (between protocol and folder path). Then use:

function isSecure() {
  return
    (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] !== 'off')
    || $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] == 443;
}

That function comes from here:

How to find out if you're using HTTPS without $_SERVER['HTTPS']

if your server doesn't use 443 for the SSL port, you'll need to change the value.

So then:

if (isSecure()) {
    $basePath = 'https//' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
} else {
    $basePath = 'http//' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];
}

Absolute URLs that will work on local (MAMP) and live server

2 Answers2