php includes is there any way to include a file relative only to that document?
include, php
Solution
This may help: (from http://php.net/manual/en/function.include.php)
Files for including are first looked for in each include_path entry relative to the current working directory, and then in the directory of current script. E.g. if your include_path is libraries, current working directory is /www/, you included include/a.php and there is include "b.php" in that file, b.php is first looked in /www/libraries/ and then in /www/include/. If filename begins with ./ or ../, it is looked for only in the current working directory or parent of the current working directory, respectively
Your question states:
If I want to include another file inside footer.php, I must do it relative to the index.php file (the one that is including it).
This is true only if the filepath you are trying to `include()` starts with `./` or `../` . If you need to include a file above the current file using a relative path, you can (as you suggested) use:
include dirname(__FILE__) . '/../file.php';
If you define an absolute path, you can also add this to the current include_path:
set_include_path(get_include_path() . PATH_SEPARATOR . '/absolute/path');
You can then do all your includes relative to '/absolute/path/'.
Problem
If I have an index.php file that includes inc/footer.php I would write: ``` include 'inc/footer.php'; ``` If I want to include another file inside footer.php, I must do it relative to the index.php file (the one that is including it). This may not be a problem, but what about if I want to include index.php from an entire different location? I understand that there are several methods to achieve this like defining an absolute path or using `dirname(__FILE__)`. This is something that has never been a real problem since one way or another I always figured it out but that I always wondered how exactly includes work in php. Can someone explain me exaclty what is going on under the hood?