Question

When including other files in your PHP scripts, what is faster for webserver to process:

include 'http://www.mydomain.com/bin/scripts/thescript.php';

OR

include '/home/user/public_html/bin/scripts/thescript.php';

OR

include '../../scripts/thescript.php';

OR is there really no practical difference in the real world?

This is not an academic question. If all three methods are equally satisfactory in real time, please tell me. That’s all I need to know.

Answer 1

Absolute, i.e. strating with “/” is always better. That way if you move your app you don’t have to manually update the path names. I use a combo of 2 functions to define the absolute path as a constant.

function tsl($path) {
    if (substr($path, strlen($path) - 1) != '/'){
        $path .= '/';
    }
}
function get_root_path() {
  $pos = strrpos(dirname(__FILE__),DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'inc');
  $adm = substr(dirname(__FILE__), 0, $pos);
  $pos2 = strrpos($adm,DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
  return tsl(substr(__FILE__, 0, $pos2));
}
define('ROOTPATH', get_root_path());

I am using inc/ in my example, but you can change this. This will allow you to just use the constant ROOTPATH rather than trying to figure out the path evertime.

Another way is like this…

<?php
define('ROOT_DIR', dirname(__FILE__));
define('ROOT_URL', substr($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], 0, - (strlen($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']) - strlen(ROOT_DIR))));
?>

Just include the file with these defines in your template page.