Question

I have folder structure like this:

  public_html
     /index.php   
  outside
     /other.php

I want in public_html/index.php include file, which is place in outside folder. So, I want define outside folder path in public_html/index.php file. I make this so:

index.php

 $doc_root_upper = preg_replace("#/[^/]+$#", "", $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]);
 $outside_folder = $doc_root_upper."/outside";
 include outside_folder.'/other.php';

This works, but there is better practice for define webroot outside folder path?

Answer 1

My personal preference is to start my init.php file (included by php.ini’s auto_prepend_file directive) with chdir($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']).

This means that all of my includes and other file functions are done from the document root.

In your case, this means you can then do include ../outside/other.php reliably.