How to get the exact project folder in PHP

Question

I really did a lot of research about this but it seems like this is different from the others. So ... what I have now is a project folder todo-oop and I only want to get the exact location/url of this project, so, I want to get http://localhost/todo-oop/.

Code:

<?php
  $project_folder = explode('\\', dirname(__FILE__));
  $root_directory = $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . '/' . end($project_folder);
?>

Output:

localhost/partials/css/todo.css

If I check the view source and click the url it returns a wrong url: http://localhost/todo-oop/localhost/partials/css/todo.css

I want to achieve like how laravel handles their css/js/img files using asset() helper function.

Answer 1

One of the great things of PHP is that you can read the source. If you want to know how the asset() function works, you can just read the code!

// Illuminate/Foundation/helpers.php
function asset($path, $secure = null)
{
    return app('url')->asset($path, $secure);
}

So you give the asset function a path to what you want to include. The asset function in turns gives it to the container instance to resolve (the app()) and then Laravel kicks in with a boatload of magic. In short it's just trying to resolve the correct URL to the path you've given.

Downside of Laravel is that is uses a lot of magic code to prevent boilerplate. This is often useful but can make it hard to see what's happening internally. Frameworks often have this trade-off between boilerplate and magic, where Laravel tends to forgo boilerplate whenever it can.

Now to the answer

What you can do that Laravel does pretty smartly, is to set a property/global/variable whenever someone connects to your app.

// bootstrap/app.php
$app = new Illuminate\Foundation\Application(
    realpath(__DIR__.'/../')
);

// Illuminate/Foundation/Application
public function __construct($basePath = null) 
{
    if ($basePath) {
        $this->setBasePath($basePath);
    }
}

Now you can access this path (which is the project root) from wherever you want in your app, by calling the base_path() helper. Which does in fact return that exact path we just set:

function base_path($path = '')
{
    return app()->basePath().($path ? DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$path : $path);
}

Hoped this answer helped you a bit!

Answer 2

As suggested, a simple solution is to create a config file (json, xml, or php — I'll use the last) that contains important information found inside the root of your domain, in this case the domain name:

/config.php

<?php
define('DS',DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
define('ROOT_DIR',__DIR__);
define('INCLUDES',ROOT_DIR.DS.'includes');
define('FUNCTIONS',INCLUDES.DS.'functions');
# Define base domain
define('SITE_URL','//localhost');

This would just combine project path (if set).

/includes/functions/asset.php

function asset($path=false)
{
    # Check if a project folder is set
    $proj     = (defined('PROJECT_NAME'))?  PROJECT_NAME : '';
    # See if the current mode uses SSL
    $protocol = (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']))? 's' : '';
    # Create a path (if no project, it will leave "//" so you need to replace that)
    $final    = str_replace('//','/','/'.trim($proj,'/').'/'.ltrim($path,'/'));
    # Send back full url
    return "http{$protocol}:".SITE_URL.$final;
}

This is just basically what you would do.

/index.php

<?php
# Include config
require_once(__DIR__.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'config.php');
# Include the asset function
include_once(FUNCTIONS.DS.'asset.php');
# Define the current project. If you are always accessing this,
# then you may want to have it in the config, but if you are doing multiple projects
# you can leave the define in the root of each project file
define('PROJECT_NAME','todo-oop');
# Use asset to write the asset path
echo asset('/partials/css/todo.css');

This should write:

http://localhost/todo-oop/partials/css/todo.css

If you have no project defined:

http://localhost/partials/css/todo.css

You can also change the SITE_URL to include the project directory if you only have one project being accessed with a solitary config:

define('SITE_URL','//localhost/todo-oop');

As demonstrated by @Loek you can use a framework do create these kind of paths and such, or you can create classes (if you are confident enough to do so) to do essentially what I am demonstrating. The benefits of using class/frameworks is that they would have more flexibility and dynamic interaction but for a very straight-forward process, you can do these types of paths using the above methodology.

Answer 3

Try this

<?php echo "http://" . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].'/'; ?>

As per this answer, hope this will work.