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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T02:41:13+00:00

I’m using file_exists() in a class and I want to use it on the

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I’m using file_exists() in a class and I want to use it on the root as well as when included in another folder to see if a file exists.

I currently have:

if (file_exists("./photos/".$this->id.".jpg") ){ 

//

}

It works when included in the root but not when included in a folder (for ajax).

What can I do to make it direct (I think thats the correct word)? I am unable to put my site URL into it because of the nature of the function.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The easiest way is to use an absolute (full) path :

    if (file_exists("/full/path/to/photos/".$this->id.".jpg") ){ 
    //
}

    This way, no matter from where your script is executed, the full path, that will never change, will always work.

    Of course, you probably don’t want to hard-code the full path into your PHP script…

    So you can use dirname(__FILE__) to get the full path to the directory which contains the file into which you wrote that dirname(__FILE__), and, from there, go with a relative one.

    For example :

    $path = dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../files/photos/'.$this->id.".jpg";
if (file_exists($path)) {
    // 
}

    (while testing this, you might want to display the value of $path, first, to make sure you got the path right)

    Note : if you are working with PHP >= 5.3, you can use __DIR__ instead of dirname(__FILE__).

    Relevant manual pages :

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