Web development - relative URLs without duplicating files

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4690662

Question

I have a site with index.php in the root folder, images in /img , and overview.php in /content. I have a sidebar.php file that is included in both index.php and overview.php. How should I refer to /img/image.gif if I include a link in each file?
The location of image.gif changes relative to the location of the file that references it.
Using /img/image.gif in sidebar.php will work in index.php, but it fails for the file located at /content/overview.php.
The only solution that I can see is to either include a separate sidebar.php in each sub-directory, or include an /img directory in every sub-directory.
The best suggestion that I can find is to use the <base> HTML tag as suggested here:
Change relative link paths for included content in PHP

However, in the same link, SamGoody suggests that the <base> tag is no longer properly supported in Internet Explorer, since version 7.

I'd like some insight on the matter before committing to a course of action.

Thanks.

EDIT: I am using the wrong approach below with "../"

Example-

root/index.php:

...  
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" />  
<title>title</title>  
</head>  
<body>  
<?php include('include/header.php'); ?>  
<?php include('include/menu.php'); ?>
...

root/include/header.php:

...  
<div id="header">  
<span class="fl"><img src="img/dun1.png"/></span><span class="fr"><img src="img/dun2.png"/></span> 
...

root/content/overview.php:

...  
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css" media="screen" />  
<title>Overview</title>  
</head>  
<body>  
<?php include('../include/header.php'); ?>
<?php include('../include/menu.php'); ?>
...
Was it helpful?

Solution

Using /img/image.gif in sidebar.php will work in index.php, but it fails for the file located at /content/overview.php

But it shouldn't. The preceding / makes it an absolute path which will work from any point on the server. If this doesn't work for you, there's a problem somewhere - in that case, post some examples.

Unless you are planning to move the whole site into a sub-directory one day, or move images to a Content Delivery Network (both actions would require re-writing the addresses) you can safely use absolute URLs.

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