delete
Expanding on Anonymous' comment, this is not necessarily correct. If the user is using a secure protocol, this URL is inaccurate. This will work properly:
<?php
// Is the user using HTTPS?
$url = (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on')) ? 'https://' : 'http://';
// Complete the URL
$url .= $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
// echo the URL
echo $url;
?>
dirname
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
dirname — Returns directory name component of path
Description
string dirname
( string $path
)
Given a string containing a path to a file, this function will return the name of the directory.
Parameters
- path
-
A path.
On Windows, both slash (/) and backslash (\) are used as directory separator character. In other environments, it is the forward slash (/).
Return Values
Returns the name of the directory. If there are no slashes in path , a dot ('.') is returned, indicating the current directory. Otherwise, the returned string is path with any trailing /component removed.
ChangeLog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 5.0.0 | dirname() is now binary safe |
| 4.0.3 | dirname() was fixed to be POSIX-compliant. |
Examples
Example #1 dirname() example
<?php
$path = "/etc/passwd";
$file = dirname($path); // $file is set to "/etc"
?>
Notes
Note: Since PHP 4.3.0, you will often get a slash or a dot back from dirname() in situations where the older functionality would have given you the empty string.
Check the following change example:
<?php
//before PHP 4.3.0
dirname('c:/'); // returned '.'
//after PHP 4.3.0
dirname('c:/x'); // returns 'c:\'
dirname('c:/Temp/x'); // returns 'c:/Temp'
dirname('/x'); // returns '\'
?>
add a note
User Contributed Notesdirname
Tom
21-Jul-2008 06:13
21-Jul-2008 06:13
Anonymous
05-Jun-2008 08:01
05-Jun-2008 08:01
A simple way to show the www path to a folder containing a file...
echo "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
rmahase at gmail dot com
12-May-2008 06:31
12-May-2008 06:31
this little function gets the top level public directory
eg. http://www.mysite.com/directory1/file.php
or http://www.mysite.com/directory1/directory2/directory3/file.php
will both return "directory1" ...which is the top level directory
<?php
function public_base_directory()
{
//get public directory structure eg "/top/second/third"
$public_directory = dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
//place each directory into array
$directory_array = explode('/', $public_directory);
//get highest or top level in array of directory strings
$public_base = max($directory_array);
return $public_base;
}
?>
ts at dev dot websafe dot pl
24-Mar-2008 11:55
24-Mar-2008 11:55
Inside of script.php I needed to know the name of the containing directory. For example, if my script was in '/var/www/htdocs/website/somedir/script.php' i needed to know 'somedir' in a unified way.
The solution is:
<?php
$containing_dir = basename(dirname(__FILE__));
?>
Zingus J. Rinkle
11-Sep-2007 05:55
11-Sep-2007 05:55
Most mkpath() function I saw listed here seem long and convoluted.
Here's mine:
<?php
function mkpath($path)
{
if(@mkdir($path) or file_exists($path)) return true;
return (mkpath(dirname($path)) and mkdir($path));
}
?>
Untested on windows, but dirname() manual says it should work.
hans111 at yahoo dot com
27-Jan-2007 01:25
27-Jan-2007 01:25
The same function but a bit improved, will use REQUEST_URI, if not available, will use PHP_SELF and if not available will use __FILE__, in this case, the function MUST be in the same file. It should work, both under Windows and *NIX.
<?php
function my_dir(){
return end(explode('/', dirname(!empty($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) ? $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] : !empty($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) ? $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] : str_replace('\\','/',__FILE__))));
}
?>
Xedecimal at gmail dot com
25-Oct-2006 07:35
25-Oct-2006 07:35
Getting absolute path of the current script:
<?php
dirname(__FILE__)
?>
Getting webserver relative path of the current script...
<?php
function GetRelativePath($path)
{
$npath = str_replace('\\', '/', $path);
return str_replace(GetVar('DOCUMENT_ROOT'), '', $npath);
}
?>
later on
<?php
GetRelativePath(dirname(__FILE__));
?>
If anyone has a better way, get to the constructive critisism!
legolas558 dot sourceforge comma net
11-Jul-2006 01:52
11-Jul-2006 01:52
The best way to get the absolute path of the folder of the currently parsed PHP script is:
<?php
if (DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR=='/')
$absolute_path = dirname(__FILE__).'/';
else
$absolute_path = str_replace('\\', '/', dirname(__FILE__)).'/';
?>
This will result in an absolute unix-style path which works ok also on PHP5 under Windows, where mixing '\' and '/' may give troubles.
[EDIT by danbrown AT php DOT net: Applied author-supplied fix from follow-up note.]
phpcomm-david at tulloh dot id dot au
02-Mar-2006 06:41
02-Mar-2006 06:41
This is dirty little trick to allow dirname() to work with paths with and without files.
basename($var.'a');
Some examples:
<?php
$var='/foo/bar/file';
basename($var) == '/foo/bar'
basename($var.'a') == '/foo/bar'
$var='/foo/bar/';
basename($var) == '/foo'
basename($var.'a') == '/foo/bar'
?>
renich at woralelandia dot com
11-Aug-2005 05:15
11-Aug-2005 05:15
--- Edited by tularis@php.net ---
You could also have a look at the getcwd() function
--- End Edit ---
A nice "current directory" function.
function current_dir()
{
$path = dirname($_SERVER[PHP_SELF]);
$position = strrpos($path,'/') + 1;
print substr($path,$position);
}
current_dir();
I find this usefull for a lot of stuff! You can maintain a modular site with dir names as modules names. At least I would like PHP guys to add this to the function list!
If there is anything out there like it, please tell me.
klugg this-is-junk at tlen dot pl
19-Jul-2005 02:14
19-Jul-2005 02:14
Attention with this. Dirname likes to mess with the slashes.
On Windows, Apache:
<?php
echo '$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]: ' . $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '<br />';
echo 'Dirname($_SERVER[PHP_SELF]: ' . dirname($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) . '<br>';
?>
prints out
$_SERVER[PHP_SELF]: /index.php
Dirname($_SERVER[PHP_SELF]: \
tobylewis at mac dot com
25-Jun-2005 01:52
25-Jun-2005 01:52
Since the paths in the examples given only have two parts (e.g. "/etc/passwd") it is not obvious whether dirname returns the single path element of the parent directory or whether it returns the whole path up to and including the parent directory. From experimentation it appears to be the latter.
e.g.
dirname('/usr/local/magic/bin');
returns '/usr/local/magic' and not just 'magic'
Also it is not immediately obvious that dirname effectively returns the parent directory of the last item of the path regardless of whether the last item is a directory or a file. (i.e. one might think that if the path given was a directory then dirname would return the entire original path since that is a directory name.)
Further the presense of a directory separator at the end of the path does not necessarily indicate that last item of the path is a directory, and so
dirname('/usr/local/magic/bin/'); #note final '/'
would return the same result as in my example above.
In short this seems to be more of a string manipulation function that strips off the last non-null file or directory element off of a path string.
Holger Thölking
28-Apr-2005 10:31
28-Apr-2005 10:31
If you merely want to find out wether a certain file is located within or underneath a certain directory or not, e.g. for White List validation, the following function might be useful to you:
<?php
function in_dir ($file, $in_dir)
{
$dir = realpath ($file);
$in_dir = realpath ($in_dir);
if (!is_dir ($file)) {
$dir = dirname ($file);
}
do {
if ($dir === $in_dir) {
$is_in_dir = TRUE;
break;
}
} while ($dir !== ($dir = dirname ($dir)));
return (bool) @$is_in_dir;
}
?>
soywiz at hotmail dot com
02-Jan-2004 03:41
02-Jan-2004 03:41
You can use it to get parent directory:
dirname(dirname(__FILE__))
...include a file relative to file path:
include(dirname(__FILE__) . '/path/relative/file_to_include.php');
..etc.
andrey at php dot net
15-Jan-2003 04:02
15-Jan-2003 04:02
Code for write permissions check:
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$dir_name = '/var/www/virtual/phpintra/htdocs/php/';
do {
$b_is_writable = is_writable($dir_name);
echo sprintf("Dir[%s]Writable[%s]\n", $dir_name, $b_is_writable? 'YES':'NO');
}while (($dir_name = dirname($dir_name)) !='/');
?>
rudecoder at yahoo dot com
12-Jan-2003 09:43
12-Jan-2003 09:43
dirname can be used to create self referencing web scripts with the following one liner.
<?php
$base_url = str_replace($DOCUMENT_ROOT, "", dirname($PHP_SELF));
?>
Using this method on a file such as:
/home/mysite/public_html/wherever/whatever.php
will return:
/wherever
Now $base_url can be used in your HTML to reference other scripts in the same directory.
Example:
href='<?=$base_url?>/myscript.php'
dave at corecomm dot us
09-Jan-2003 07:20
09-Jan-2003 07:20
I very much appreciated Fredrich Echol's suggestion (rwf at gpcom dot net) of how to find a base path, but found that it failed when the initial script was already in the root folder -- dirname('/rootscript.php')=='/' and dirname('/include/includescript.php')=='/include' which have the same number of slashes. This variation is what I'm now using:
<?php
if (!defined("BASE_PATH")) define('BASE_PATH', dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'])=='/' ? './' : str_repeat("../", substr_count(dirname($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"]), "/")));
?>
This explicitly checks for the root path (/) and uses './' as the base path if we're in the root folder.
I put this at/near the top of any file that calls another. (I used define for my own convenience; should work just fine with variables and without testing to see if you already did it.)
Note that in both cases (root-folder script and non-root-folder script), BASE_PATH will include a trailing slash. At least with Apache on Darwin (Mac OS X), you can include(BASE_PATH.'/myfile.php'); and the doubled slash won't cause any problems, giving the same result as include(BASE_PATH.'myfile.php'); .
rwf at gpcom dot net
02-Aug-2002 11:08
02-Aug-2002 11:08
If you want relative includes like C or C++ has, you need to find out where you are in relation to the base path of the server. That is, if you are two levels into the "htdocs" directory in apache, then you need to add "../../" to the begining of the include to get back to the base directory. That's simple. What's NOT so simple is when you have "nested" included files.
Continuing the example above, if you have a file example.php and it includes "../../lib.php" and lib.php includes "lib2.php" guess where "lib2.php" needs to be located? In the same directory as example.php! What you really wanted was to have lib.php and lib2.php in the same directory... To get that result you need to include "../../lib2.php" in lib.php... But wait, now it won't work if the original example.php file is in any other place but two levels deep!
The answer to the problem is this: find the number of levels you are currently into the base directory and add as many "../" as you need to the begining of the include filename in EVERY include file.
Here's an example:
example.php
------------
$BasePath = str_repeat("../", substr_count(dirname($_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"]), "/"));
require_once($BasePath."lib.php");
------------
Notice that we're adding the $BasePath and the name of the file we want together to get the full path. It will look like this: "../../lib.php"
lib.php
------
require_once($BasePath."lib2.php");
------
Notice here that BasePath has already been defined so we don't know or care what BasePath looks like, only that it now allows us to use a relative path to lib2.php since it automatically adds the number of "../" needed to get to it from the original example.php that the server executed. The path here will look like this: "../../lib2.php"
And now we can easily have lib.php and lib2.php in the same directory, and have lib.php include lib2.php as if it's a relative include.
Pretty simple, no? :)
-Fredric Echols
tapken at engter dot de
01-May-2002 07:09
01-May-2002 07:09
To get the directory of current included file:
<?php
dirname(__FILE__);
?>
For example, if a script called 'database.init.php' which is included from anywhere on the filesystem wants to include the script 'database.class.php', which lays in the same directory, you can use:
<?php
include_once(dirname(__FILE__) . '/database.class.php');
?>