too long

Question

I'm at a loss as to why I'm having this problem. I'm running IIS on Windows 7 for development but have a Linux server for web hosting.

The problem is whenever I use a PHP system function, like file_exists() or move_uploaded_file(), using a path like /support/images/flags/countries/ always fails. The support directory is under the root directory of the site. All the documentation I have read seems to state that the path should work. Is this because I use Windows? Even the posts on SO seem to say it should work.

In order to get it to work correctly I have to use a path like {$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']}/support/images/flags/countries

Can anyone explain why my thinking is wrong?

Answer 1

Using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is not a good idea, especially if you're planning to use CLI in your application, where server variables are not available. You should try something like

dirname(__FILE__)

in your script instead, or consider introducing a custom constant which would contain the full system path to your root folder - e.g,

define('MY_APP_ROOT', '/my/full/path/');

Much easier than relying on Apache or IIS in this.