Question

I have header.php and footer.php files which I include in all of my pages. A sample page looks like this –

<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/header.php');?>

<div id="content">
...
</div> <!-- content -->

<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/footer.php') ?>

Although this works well on the server, but when I test pages locally [ xampp on Windows 7 ], I get the following error message instead of the header, similarly for the footer –

Warning: include(C:/xampp/htdocs/header.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in C:\xampp\htdocs\f\index.php on line 1

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'C:/xampp/htdocs/header.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;C:\xampp\php\PEAR') in C:\xampp\htdocs\f\index.php on line 1

This makes testing very tedious as I have to upload to the server for every minor change.

Also, I dug around the WP code, and it uses a get-header() to display the header.php file. I could not completely understand the function. My site does not use WP.

What is the correct way for including header and footer files?

Answer 1

It seems that $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is pointing to C:\xampp\htdocs, while your scripts are at C:\xampp\htdocs\f\, check the value of $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] on your local environment.

edit:

<?php
$rootDir = "";
if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],'localhost')===FALSE)
{
  //On Production
  $rootDir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
}
else
{
  //On Dev server
  $rootDir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/f';
}

<?php include($rootDir.'/header.php');?>

<div id="content">
...
</div> <!-- content -->

<?php include($rootDir.'/footer.php') ?>


?>