I would like to point out the difference in behavior in IIS/Windows and Apache/Unix (not sure about any others, but I would think that any server under Windows will be have the same as IIS/Windows and any server under Unix will behave the same as Apache/Unix) when it comes to path specified for included files.
Consider the following:
<?php
include '/Path/To/File.php';
?>
In IIS/Windows, the file is looked for at the root of the virtual host (we'll say C:\Server\Sites\MySite) since the path began with a forward slash. This behavior works in HTML under all platforms because browsers interpret the / as the root of the server.
However, Unix file/folder structuring is a little different. The / represents the root of the hard drive or current hard drive partition. In other words, it would basically be looking for root:/Path/To/File.php instead of serverRoot:/Path/To/File.php (which we'll say is /usr/var/www/htdocs). Thusly, an error/warning would be thrown because the path doesn't exist in the root path.
I just thought I'd mention that. It will definitely save some trouble for those users who work under Windows and transport their applications to an Unix-based server.
A work around would be something like:
<?php
$documentRoot = null;
if (isset($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'])) {
$documentRoot = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
if (strstr($documentRoot, '/') || strstr($documentRoot, '\\')) {
if (strstr($documentRoot, '/')) {
$documentRoot = str_replace('/', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $documentRoot);
}
elseif (strstr($documentRoot, '\\')) {
$documentRoot = str_replace('\\', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $documentRoot);
}
}
if (preg_match('/[^\\/]{1}\\[^\\/]{1}/', $documentRoot)) {
$documentRoot = preg_replace('/([^\\/]{1})\\([^\\/]{1})/', '\\1DIR_SEP\\2', $documentRoot);
$documentRoot = str_replace('DIR_SEP', '\\\\', $documentRoot);
}
}
else {
$directories = array(
'Includes'
);
if (defined('__DIR__')) {
$currentDirectory = __DIR__;
}
else {
$currentDirectory = dirname(__FILE__);
}
$currentDirectory = rtrim($currentDirectory, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
$currentDirectory = $currentDirectory . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
foreach ($directories as $directory) {
$currentDirectory = str_replace(
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $directory . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR,
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR,
$currentDirectory
);
}
$currentDirectory = rtrim($currentDirectory, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);
}
define('SERVER_DOC_ROOT', $documentRoot);
?>
Using this file, you can include files using the defined SERVER_DOC_ROOT constant and each file included that way will be included from the correct location and no errors/warnings will be thrown.
Example:
<?php
include SERVER_DOC_ROOT . '/Path/To/File.php';
?>