How to get the relative directory no matter from where it's included in PHP?

Question

If it\'s Path_To_DocumentRoot/a/b/c.php,should always be /a/b.

I use this:

dirname($_SERVER[\"PHP_SELF\"])

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Answer 1

Do you have access to $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']? If you do, doing:

dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']);

Should work. Otherwise do this:

In PHP < 5.3:

substr(dirname(__FILE__), strlen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']));

Or PHP >= 5.3:

substr(__DIR__, strlen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']));

---

You might need to realpath() and str_replace() all \ to / to make it fully portable, like this:

substr(str_replace('\\', '/', realpath(dirname(__FILE__))), strlen(str_replace('\\', '/', realpath($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']))));

Answer 2

I know this is an old question but the solutions suggested using DOCUMENT_ROOT assume the web folder structure reflects the server folder structure. I have a situation where this isn't the case. My solution is as follows. You can work out how a server address maps to a web address if you have an example from the same mapped area folders. As long as the root php file that included this file is in the same mapped area you have an example.

$_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] is the server address of this file and $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] is the web relative version. Given these two you can work out what the web relative version of your file is from its server address (__FILE__) as follows.

function getCurrentFileUrl() {
    $file = __FILE__;
    $script = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'];
    $phpself = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

    // find end of section of $file which is common to $script
    $i = 0;
    while($file[$i] == $script[$i]) {
        $i++;
    }
    // remove end section of $phpself that is the equivalent to the section of $script not included in $file. 
    $phpself = substr($phpself, 0, strlen($phpself)-(strlen($script)-$i));
    // append end section of $file onto result
    $phpself .= substr($file, $i, strlen($file)-$i);

    // complete address 
    return $_SERVER['REQUEST_SCHEME'].'://'.$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$phpself;
}

Answer 3

I had to create something to what you need so here is the result. By giving a base directory you receive a relative path to a file starting from base directory. Function is pretty fast, 100,000 checks took 0.64s. on my server. And it works for both directories and files. It is linux compatible. Don't even try it on windows :)

     /**
     * Return a relative path to a file or directory using base directory. 
     * When you set $base to /website and $path to /website/store/library.php
     * this function will return /store/library.php
     * 
     * Remember: All paths have to start from "/" or "\" this is not Windows compatible.
     * 
     * @param   String   $base   A base path used to construct relative path. For example /website
     * @param   String   $path   A full path to file or directory used to construct relative path. For example /website/store/library.php
     * 
     * @return  String
     */
    function getRelativePath($base, $path) {
        // Detect directory separator
        $separator = substr($base, 0, 1);
        $base = array_slice(explode($separator, rtrim($base,$separator)),1);
        $path = array_slice(explode($separator, rtrim($path,$separator)),1);

        return $separator.implode($separator, array_slice($path, count($base)));
    }

Usage

You need to get relative path to file /var/www/example.com/media/test.jpg Your base path is /var/www/example.com

Use the function like this:

$relative = getRelativePath('/var/www/example.com','/var/www/example.com/media/test.jpg');

Function will return /media/test.jpg.

If you need only the /media part without a file use it like this:

$relative = dirname(getRelativePath('/var/www/example.com','/var/www/example.com/media/test.jpg'));

Answer 4

PHP < 5.3:

dirname(__FILE__)

PHP >= 5.3:

__DIR__

EDIT:

Here is the code to get path of included file relative to the path of running php file:

    $thispath = explode('\\', str_replace('/','\\', dirname(__FILE__)));
    $rootpath = explode('\\', str_replace('/','\\', dirname($_SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"])));
    $relpath = array();
    $dotted = 0;
    for ($i = 0; $i < count($rootpath); $i++) {
        if ($i >= count($thispath)) {
            $dotted++;
        }
        elseif ($thispath[$i] != $rootpath[$i]) {
            $relpath[] = $thispath[$i]; 
            $dotted++;
        }
    }
    print str_repeat('../', $dotted) . implode('/', array_merge($relpath, array_slice($thispath, count($rootpath))));

Answer 5

Here's a general purpose function to get the relative path between two paths.

/**
 * Return relative path between two sources
 * @param $from
 * @param $to
 * @param string $separator
 * @return string
 */
function relativePath($from, $to, $separator = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR)
{
    $from   = str_replace(array('/', '\\'), $separator, $from);
    $to     = str_replace(array('/', '\\'), $separator, $to);

    $arFrom = explode($separator, rtrim($from, $separator));
    $arTo = explode($separator, rtrim($to, $separator));
    while(count($arFrom) && count($arTo) && ($arFrom[0] == $arTo[0]))
    {
        array_shift($arFrom);
        array_shift($arTo);
    }

    return str_pad("", count($arFrom) * 3, '..'.$separator).implode($separator, $arTo);
}

Examples

relativePath('c:\temp\foo\bar', 'c:\temp');              // Result: ../../
relativePath('c:\temp\foo\bar', 'c:\\');                 // Result: ../../../
relativePath('c:\temp\foo\bar', 'c:\temp\foo\bar\lala'); // Result: lala