Using an absolute URL in PHP "require" and "include"

Hi all,

The question came up about how to specify an absolute URL in a PHP require instead of a relative path. (Important in this case since my client wants to email their page as a web page and all links must be absolute URLs)

Here’s something I found which looks promising, but I admit I don’t really have a clue how to implement it on their site or on their web page.

Any takers?

Best,

Jerry Kornbluth

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Here’s the real URL: http://www.artistsofpalmnbeachcounty.org

And the relative require path is:
<?php
require 'emailcode.class.php';
$emailcode = new ClassEmailcode();?>

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Here’s article that I found on webmaster world at http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/5504.htm#msg1300723 near the bottom of the post.

Control your included files

Wouldn't it be nice to just include() [php.net] your files and never have to worry about the path? You set it once when you setup a new site and be done with it. A lot of programmers use this technique, you'll often see it called the "config.php" script or something similar. Here's a sample to get you started (replace the bold (not bold in the article) path with the path to your includes directory):
ini_set [php.net]('include_path [php.net]',
realpath [php.net]($_SERVER [php.net]['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/../includes/')
. PATH_SEPARATOR [php.net]
. ini_get [php.net]('include_path'));

The poster goes on to say:

"Some pretty neat stuff going on in here.

First, notice the use of the realpath() function to put the canonicalized absolute pathname together from a relative link (/../includes/), which by the way, resides below the public document root ;) -- tidies it up quite nicely.

Second, we concatenate the current server configuration include_path to the end of our include_path. Why? In case you want to use any existing paths, such as PEAR classes.

Lastly, notice the use of the PATH_SEPARATOR predefined constant? That way you can use it on a Windows server or a *nix server without having to modify anything."