Re: The wonderful non-intuitive php include statement

On Aug 29, 11:00 pm, Geoff Muldoon <geoff.muld...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article <1188443617.322132.135...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
says...

Ok .. I have some classes set up to do some database queries and what
not. The database configuration is an XML file. Now I need to include
this class in a few pages, in different directories. Here is an
example of the class.

class foo {
private $xml;

function foo() {
$this->xml = simplexml_load_file('config/dbconfig.xml);

So the call by the simplexml_load_file function is to a file which is
addressed using a relative rather than absolute (starting with a / on *nix
or C: on windoze) file path.

I am using apache which has php set up as a module. This class (which
resides 2 directories deep e.g htdocs/classes/foo) works fine in
main.php which resides in htdocs.

It's finding it as htdocs/config/dbconfig.xml.

But if I include this class in
another php file which is in a different directory .... say htdocs/
forums I get this type of error:

Warning: simplexml_load_file() [function.simplexml-load-file]: I/O
warning : failed to load external entity "config/dbconfig.xml"

Because it's NOT finding it as htdocs/forum/config/dbconfig.xml. Why, coz
it ain't there!

I tried using set_include_path(), which I could not get to work right,
and I also tried to set 'include_path' in php.ini which also did not
work.

Because include_path is used by the include() function, not by the
simplexml_load_file() function?

PHP include seems to work very non-intuitive which is driving me
nuts.

It's simply following standard file system rules.

They really need to implement this a little better. I really
don't see why the simplexml_load_file works in htdocs/classes/foo and
not htdocs/forums.

Find out what your $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is - use a simple echo
statement if you need to, or read up about phpinfo() - it's likely it
will be /<maybe_something>/htdocs or C:\\<maybe_something>\htdocs by the
sound of it.

The change the call in your function to:
simplexml_load_file($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/config/dbconfig.xml);
or whatever absolute path you can use to properly locate the file.

Geoff M

I forgot to write the fact that I was also having a problem with
'include()' for instance including a file with an include, which was
causing a similar problem. I am guessing I could also use
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] for this as well, to use an absolute path
instead of relative.

.

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