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I have a question about the inclusion of an header file using PHP.

The code above is the header that I include in all my HTML/PHP view files. I want to save it inside a file called as a naming convention header.php.
My doubt is about the resources loading.

How I can load the needed stylesheets and js files if the header is included from another folder that isn't the same that hold the main css and js folders?

I want to avoid the duplication of the basic resources, and avoid having console errors due to the position of the resources files.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="it">
<head>
<!-- basic meta tag -->
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title></title>
<meta name="description" content="" />
<meta name="keywords" content="" />
<meta name="author" content="" />
<!-- add facebook og tag here -->
<meta property="og:url" content="" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content="" />
<meta property="og:description" content="" />
<meta property="og:image" content="" />
<!-- <meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://masserianobile.it; font-src 'self' https://fonts.gstatic.com/; img-src 'self'; style-src 'self' https://fonts.googleapis.com/;">  -->

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/bootstrap.min.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/fontawesome-all.min.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/app.min.css" type="text/css">

<script src="js/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="js/bootstrap.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src=""></script>

</head>
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4
  • See include, just put your <head> as it should be in the page, that's where you include it that matters, not where you store it. Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 9:34
  • I know how the include function works, I was talking about the page resources, if I include the header file inside a page that is in a different folder than the site root, it will not load the css and js files due to the different position of that folders. Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 9:48
  • You want an automatic ../ prefix for resources ? Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 9:51
  • Yes, I want to avoid to edit the header file to match the resources folders Commented Aug 30, 2018 at 10:05

1 Answer 1

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1

Here is what I use to autoload my PHP classes for any nested directory, this can work for your Front-End resources too:

<?php

/* the root directory of your project
   can be useful when working on local env
   must not end with a slash, leave it empty if not needed */
const ROOT_PATH = '/projects/some_stuff';

// Get parts of the URL without the root path
$rel_path = explode('/', str_replace(ROOT_PATH, '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']));

// Remove empty items from the parts
$rel_path = array_filter($rel_path);

// If the last part is a php file, remove it, we don't need it
if (strpos(end($rel_path), '.php') !== false) { array_pop($rel_path); }

// Build the "../" prefix
$prefix = implode('/', array_fill(0, count($rel_path), '..'));
$prefix = empty($prefix) ? '' : $prefix . '/';

?>

<!-- just output the prefix before the resource URL -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $prefix; ?>css/bootstrap.min.css" type="text/css">

Documentation:

  • $_SERVER Server and execution environment information
  • array_filter() Filters elements of an array using a callback function
  • end() Set the internal pointer of an array to its last element
  • array_pop() Pop the element off the end of array
  • array_fill() Fill an array with values
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3 Comments

I will give to your script a try! I was using the ob_start(), ob_get_clean() and the export() functions to load the header template file and to change the paths when needed.
Tell me if it works, but it should, I use this on production server with PHP 7 without any issue.
And make sure the ROOT_PATH is the parent directory of the resources folder(s) (or an empty string).

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