php how to relative pathing

Question

How to do relative pathing? how to use __dir__

here is my file structure before

public_html
  ├── config
  |    |__config.php
  ├── core
  |    |__init.php
  ├── helper
  |    |__helper.php
  ├── libraries
  |    |__page1.php
  ├── templates
  │   ├── page1template.php
  │
  │__index.php
  │__page1.php

After having too many pages. I want to tiddy them up into "rep" folder and "admin" folder. so my new file structure look like this

public_html
  ├── config
  |    |__config.php
  ├── core
  |    |__init.php
  ├── helper
  |    |__helper.php
  ├── libraries
  |    |__page1.php
  ├── templates
  │   ├── page1template.php
  │
  │__index.php
  |
  ├── rep
  |    |__page1.php
  ├── admin
  │   ├── page1.php

The problem is, my requires and includes are still absolute pathing. see a sample below

my init file

//Start Session
session_start();

//Include Configuration
require_once('config/config.php');

//Helper Function Files
require_once('helpers/system_helper.php');
require_once('helpers/format_helper.php');

//Autoload Classes
function __autoload($class_name){
    require_once('libraries/'.$class_name .'.php');
}

my page1.php

 <?php require('core/init.php'); ?>
     //Get Template & Assign Vars
     $template = new Template('templates/rep/page1.php');

if I add an "../" in front of every path. then the page will loads correctly. see below

require_once('../config/config.php');
require_once('../helpers/system_helper.php');
require_once('../helpers/format_helper.php');
require_once('../libraries/'.$class_name .'.php');
require('../core/init.php'); 
$template = new Template('../templates/rep/page1.php');

but then my index.php will break because index is in the root folder, so the new path is wrong relative to it. I found two question with related issue. I suspect it is related to using __dir__ to replace ../ but I dont know where to put it.

PHP include relative path

Are PHP include paths relative to the file or the calling code?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 27 '16 at 00:58

For me personally, I try to make includes relative to the file doing the including, if I'm sure the structure is supposed to be a certain way. For instance, you could make a file at core/loader.php right next to core/init.php ... Then if you assume the relative structure between the loader and the other files would always remain the same, core/loader.php could be something like

<?php

// Get the path of whatever folder is holding the core/config/etc folders
$main_dir=RealPath(DirName(__FILE__).'/../');

require("{$main_dir}/config/config.php");
require("{$main_dir}/helpers/system_helper.php");
// etc

?>

The point here being that you can now move that set of folders anywhere you want (recommendation: outside public_html), and they should still load, as long as you require'ed the right path to the loader.

thank you. took me hours reading your post and this one over and over. in the end I used dirname(__DIR__).'/path/to.file' and it worked. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36577020/failed-to-open-stream-no-such-file-or-directory/36577021#36577021 — codenoob, Jun 27 '16 at 05:37

php how to relative pathing

1 Answers1