.htaccess rewrite problem

[fastsol1]

Windows 7 and wamp

[Beverleyh]

If you want to side-step .htaccess altogether, you *could* set a global path variable in a common file.

I do something similar to you (each website in a sub-folder) but in my main header.php file for each website ,I include a $myRoot variable - something like;

<?php $myRoot = 'http://localhost/mywebsite/'; ?>

And then prefix the paths in my HTML markup with the variable, like this (all of my website pages are .php so this works for me);

<script src="<?php echo $myRoot;?>scripts/general.js"></script>

The output will be: <script src="http://localhost/mywebsite/scripts/general.js"></script>

Then when you move your website to the live server, you only change your $myRoot variable in the common file and the change filters down to all the paths in your markup;

<?php $myRoot = 'http://www.mywebsite.com/'; ?>

OR just;

<?php $myRoot = '/'; ?>

so the output would be; <script src="http://www.mywebsite.com/scripts/general.js"></script> or <script src="/scripts/general.js"></script>

You wouldn't be able to do this in all cases but it *might* work for you.

[fastsol1]

I have thought of your concept to Bev. Am I correct when saying that the / does not work as expected for php with include() and require(), I seem to get a fatal error when using it on a live site. Does php look from the root already or what?

[Beverleyh]

Yes, if you use "/" in a php include() its trying to look from a place even deeper than the root of your wamp-dwelling website - ie. the root of your C drive instead.

But, you can create a variable for your php includes using the same idea though;

$myRootURL = 'http://localhost/mywebsite/';
$myRootPATH = 'C:\wamp\www\mywebsite\';

There are other ways to define a root but this is the one I use (old habits and all)

EDIT: some other ways to define a root path for php includes: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...de-path-in-php

[traq]

That's a great solution and totally workable/sufficient in many cases. I'd only suggest using constants instead of variables, so you can't accidentally modify/overwrite them (and they will always be available globally, regardless of scope):

<?php

define( 'ROOT_URL','/localhost/sites/example' );
define( 'ROOT_PATH','C:\wamp\www\sites\example' );

You could even do some switching logic so you wouldn't need to change them all manually when you uploaded to your server:

<?php

if( $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] === 'localhost' ){
    require file/that/defines/local/constants.php;
}
else{
    require file/that/defines/production/constants.php;
}

[Beverleyh]

Nice - I'll have to remember that switcharoo logic traq

[fastsol1]

Thanks for all the input. I have taken the time and converted my cms to use / on most links and image paths. It wasn't that terrible to do really. I made a few define() to help, although a couple of these I already had but mostly for localhost use. I have a few different versions so that I have options of when and where I need to use them depending on localhost or online and php includes or html links.

// Strips the SERVER HOST to main domain name
function stripHost()
{
    if(substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], 0, 4) == "www.")
    {$server = substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'], 4);}
    else {$server = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];}

    return $server;
}

define("SITE_SERVER", $site_server = stripHost());

define("CURRENT_DIR", (dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) == '/') ? '/' : dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']).'/');

define("BASE_URL", (SITE_SERVER == 'localhost') ? 'http://'.SITE_SERVER.CURRENT_DIR : '/');

define("ROOT", dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/'); 

[fastsol1]

I also just figured out how to setup virtual host on my localhost, so that's really cool!

[traq]

awesome!