Question

i’m building a php cms style app for tracking of members characters, the projects coming along nicely, but I am wondering if there is a more efficient way of coding my navigation bar.

the bar is included in many different pages so relative links as standard will not work for obvious reasons, the way I have been getting around this is by

if (strstr($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'], "admin/char/")) {
$home = "../../index.php";
$logout = "../user/logout.php";
} else if (strstr($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'], "admin/user/")) {

etc.

so I have each combination of path that could be typed, and this solution works, and quite well, but since I am copying pasting code and making changes the chances of me missing something is increased, and with more links this chance is increased.

I am wondering if there a better way of achieving the same result with less code?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You might want to create a common configuration file (include in all your scripts) where you define a constant (e.g. BASE_URL = ‘http://localhost/your_site/’).

Then, change all your links with ABSOLUTE values instead, using the BASE_URL constant defined in the configuration file.

In the end you will have something like:

$home = BASE_URL . 'index.php';

which will always be a valid link.

At deployment, you will need to change the configuration file and set BASE_URL as your new domain (e.g. www.mysite.com).