Question

I like to refer images, css and php files using their absolute path, that is starting from root, with an address beginning with “/”.

I need to include php files that are all located at “/bin/res/include”. I figured out I can’t use absolute paths in php as I do in html. After some research I discovered the best method that suits my needs is to

define("PHP_ROOT", "/home/a7503679/public_html/bin/res/include/");

and then to include some file

include_once(PHP_ROOT."filename.php");

I don’t want to paste the first define on every html page. Can I do a global define? Can I define that constant one time at one place and make it known to all html pages? If so, how and where is the global place?

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• I can’t use dirname(__FILE__); because that only gives the full path to the folder where I’m currently in, which may not be the root.
• I can’t use $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_NAME'] because I’m using a shared hosting service.

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[UPDATE:solution] thx everyone, especially RiaD for its idea, this is what I’ve done:

Edited my .htaccess file at the root of my website and added the following line,

#Loads an init php located at <fullpath>/<path-to-folder-with-php-files-to-include>/init.php
php_value auto_prepend_file /home/a7503679/public_html/bin/res/include/init.php

Now all my html files will include that init.php file, so you should (as I did) put there all the common php code you’ll need on every html page, which in my case was:

<?php
define("PHP_ROOT", "/home/a7503679/public_html/bin/res/include/"); #this solves the problem
include 'lang.php'; #translations file
?>

Before I needed to include that lang.php on every page and now it’s automatically done. If I need to include any other php file, using its absolute path, I just type include PHP_ROOT.'filename.php';

Answer 1

You can use auto_prepend_file in your .htaccess

PS: $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] should work (on shared hostings too)