Absolute/Relative URLs help

[westexasman]

Having a bit of an issue with absolute/relative urls. I have MAC running OS 10.5.4, Apache 2.2, PHP 5.2.5, MySQL 5.0.67 and phpMyAdmin 2.11.8.1.

 

Things work great, it took me a while, but I finally have all of these apps running soundfully with each other and can develop nicely. I am, however, running into an issue which I would like some help with.

 

I will first list my vhost settings and any other pertinent information that could help this process.

 

Here is the document root in my http.conf file:

DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

 

Here are important settings in the httpd-vhosts.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot "/Users/CDB/Sites"
</VirtualHost>

#IndieViz Local Site
Listen 1001
<VirtualHost *:1001>
     DocumentRoot "/Users/CDB/Sites/indieViz/httpdocs"
     ServerName 10.0.1.182:1001
</VirtualHost>

<Directory /Users/CDB/Sites/indieViz/httpdocs>
     Allow from all
</Directory>

 

Ok, now on to my issue:

 

I access my development site listed at 10.0.1.182:1001 and in the index.php page are the following lines

 

include("/include/lib.php");

<img src="/img/banner_contest_269x195.jpg" width="269" height="195" border="0">

 

When the page is served, it cannot find the /include/lib.php but it CAN find the /img/banner... file.

 

There is both an img folder and an include folder in the httpdocs dir (the ROOT dir). So, what is the reason that /include doesn't resolve to the root, but /img does? The reason I need /include to work is that this file is included on many files deep within the site structure. I really don't want to type in ../../include and ../include every time I want to include this file, so, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I hope this makes sense, if not, please ask, I will try my best to explain.

 

Thanks for any help,

Clay

[PFMaBiSmAd]

The leading slash in the file system path in - include("/include/lib.php"); refers to the root of the current disk.

[westexasman]

OK

 

So, include("/include/lib.php"); and <img src=/image/file.jpg> are differect? the src=/ is not referring the the root of the current disk but the include("/include/lib/php"); is?

 

If that is the case, how would I go about fixing that. It doesn't make much sense, honestly, is this a php issue, why would /include/ refer to system root and not my document root? How would I go about making it refer to the document root, php.ini??

 

Thanks again,

[PFMaBiSmAd]

An include is executed by php on the server. Unless you specify a protocol wrapper, it operates using a file system path, where a leading slash is the root of the current disk.

 

A src="..." is executed by a browser and it can only operate using a URL. A leading slash in a URL causes the browser to form a url starting at the domain root.

 

I recommend forming an absolute file system path as follows -

 

include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/include/lib.php"); 

[westexasman]

Thank you, that worked perfectly. I appreciate the help.