Question

I’m using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] for my include paths so files will figure out where they are running from (i.e. whether they’re on live or staging) and it works fine, except for scripts that are run by cron in which I have to hardcode the path.

Is there another variable I could use that could work from both cron and the browser?

Answer 1

When running your PHP script through cron, I assume it is executed in the context of the CLI instead of the web server. In the case of executing PHP from the CLI, the $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] is not populated correctly. You can use the following code to work around this:

if ($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] == "")
   $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = dirname(__FILE__);