Question

So, I have a WordPress theme.

In the functions.php file, I’m writing a function that looks something like this:

function my_function(){
    $var1 = 'apple';
    $var2 = 'orange';
    include get_bloginfo('stylesheet_directory').'/lib/fruits.php';
}

And the fruits.php file looks like this:

<?php

echo "My brother's favorite fruit is an $var1, but my favorite fruit is an $var2.";

?>

When I call my_function() somewhere in my theme, the echo statement in fruits.php displays on the screen, but the values of $var1 and $var2 do not display. They’re simply blank.

Now here’s the strange part. If I move fruits.php to the same directory as functions.php, and change the include statement in my_function() to this:

include 'fruits.php';

the 2 variables display just fine.

Any ideas what could be causing this problem?

FYI, I did try defining the path to fruits.php in a variable and then trying

include $path;

to no avail.

Answer 1

You’re prepending the include directory with wordpress stylesheet_directory (rather than STYLESHEETPATH constant for example) which is a URL, not a file path so it shouldn’t be used to include files in PHP. Change this to correctly include the file.