####PHP Dynamic File Paths (for templating)

A quick and dirty solution for relative path issues when templating with PHP. The index.php file contains the code that you should include at the top of every page that you would like to use.

Ex.

<?php

if ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] == 'localhost') {
    require_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "path/to/local/directory/inc/config.php");
} else {
    require_once($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "path/to/web/server/directory/inc/config.php");
}   
  
include(ROOT_PATH . "inc/header.php");
  
?>

<h1>Hello World!</h1>

<img src="<?php echo BASE_URL; ?>assets/img/thumbs-up.png" />

<?php include(ROOT_PATH . "inc/footer.php"); ?>

If you are having problems figuring out the folder paths you can use the predefined php constants here.

If you are using MAMP as your local server, the htdocs folder is usually your root, so you would use /my-project/ if your project is saved in a folder named my-project.

In a typical web server environment, your root folder is most likely www or public_html. So if your files are located directly inside that folder and not in a subfolder, you would use / for your web server path inside the require_once() and the define() functions.