Server['document_root']

Bananna man

Hi,

Im having problems fuguring out what is going on exactly when i use SERVER in my php scripts. On my testing server i have set the document root to the root folder where my site is.

On the homepage if i use an includes such as:

<?php include $_SERVER.'/mysite-includes/user-login.php';?>

this seems to work on both the live server and my apache server, but if i use this code (which lies in the included file) to locate to an image location:

<img src="<?php include $_SERVER;?>/mysite-images/12.jpg" width="21" height="20" align="absmiddle">

This works on the live server but not on my testing server.

Anyone know why this is happening?

Thanks

Serbian

You should never use $_SERVER; to reference files on your server. You are exposing the filestructure of your machine for a start and it's bad practice. All images should be referenced relevant to the site root. So, say you keep all your images in the images folder, you should link to any image as <img src="/images/image.png" alt="Image" />.

Bananna man

Thanks, i was using something like ../images/12.jpg i.e. with the ../ before the file location but that was giving me problems when i was on a page in a subfolder. The images seem to be working fine now.

I am getting a problem now when i try to include a file using /mysite-includes-files/login.php. It works when i use the DOCUMENT_ROOT before it but not like this. This is my problem, i dont know what im doing exactly so when i change the sturcture to solve one problem i get another problem somewhere else.

is_that_so

Images are probably best linked to as posted by Serbian.
Includes tend to be library type files whose functions or classes you want to include in your program.

Try

include '/includespath/includefile.php';

in your PHP.

Change names as required.
If your webserver supports PHP it already knows where $_SERVER is.
In this example the includes directory is directly off the "root".

Bananna man

is_that_so wrote:

Images are probably best linked to as posted by Serbian.
Includes tend to be library type files whose functions or classes you want to include in your program.

Try

include '/includespath/includefile.php';

in your PHP.

Change names as required.
If your webserver supports PHP it already knows where $_SERVER is.
In this example the includes directory is directly off the "root".

That gives me problems if im on a page in a subfolder though, if i have my links in an includes file when im not in the root folder i get problems.

is_that_so

Bananna man wrote:

That gives me problems if im on a page in a subfolder though, if i have my links in an includes file when im not in the root folder i get problems.

Can you post some code to show exactly what you mean?

Bananna man

The links are working finr noe with just putting '/mysite/login.php' but i have tried doing the includes in this format also but if i use just:

<?php include '/ps3-includes/right-column-homepage.php';?>

or

<?php include '../ps3-includes/right-column-homepage.php';?>

its not working, but if i use

<?php include $_SERVER.'/ps3-includes/right-column-homepage.php';?>

it does.

Does anyone know of a good tutorial about this? I have had a look on the php.net site but that didnt help matters and did a search for tutorials in this specific area but couldnt find anything.

is_that_so

What does phpinfo(); or print_r($_SERVER); tell you?
They can give you server settings details.

Here is a tutorial which may help explain the use of paths for you.

Bananna man

is_that_so wrote:

What does phpinfo(); or print_r($_SERVER); tell you?
They can give you server settings details.

Here is a tutorial which may help explain the use of paths for you.

Cheers, i'll have a read of that

daymobrew

Serbian wrote:

You should never use $_SERVER; to reference files on your server. You are exposing the filestructure of your machine for a start and it's bad practice.

In the example where OP included a php script, a user will not see the value for $_SERVER.
In the example with the image file, it simply won't work if DOCUMENT_ROOT is not the root dir (because browser will need a different path to the file system).

Either way, I don't see how it exposes the file structure.