Include files from parent or other directory

Depends on where the file you are trying to include from is located.

Example:

/rootdir/pages/file.php

/someotherDir/index.php

If you wrote the following in index.php: include('/rootdir/pages/file.php');it would error becuase it would try to get:

/someotherDir/rootdir/pages/file.php Which of course doesn't exist...

So you would have to use include('../rootdir/pages/file.php');

include() and its relatives take filesystem paths, not web paths relative to the document root. To get the parent directory, use ../

include('../somefilein_parent.php');
include('../../somefile_2levels_up.php');

If you begin with a /, an absolute system file path will be used:

// Full absolute path...
include('/home/username/sites/project/include/config.php');

If your server is not resolving the file from the parent directory using

include '../somefilein_parent.php'

try this (using the parent directory relative to the script):

include __DIR__ . "/../somefilein_parent.php";

Here's something I wrote with that problem in mind:

<?
function absolute_include($file)
         {
         /*
         $file is the file url relative to the root of your site.
         Yourdomain.com/folder/file.inc would be passed as
         "folder/file.inc"
         */

         $folder_depth = substr_count($_SERVER["PHP_SELF"] , "/");

         if($folder_depth == false)
            $folder_depth = 1;

         include(str_repeat("../", $folder_depth - 1) . $file);
         }
?>

hope it helps.