How to Document Root in PHP

1. $_SERVER in PHP
2. DOCUMENT_ROOT in PHP

Your PHP script may need the root directory name in which the script is currently executing. This article will introduce how to get the directory name of the current script inside the project.

$_SERVER in PHP

$_SERVER is an array that contains information about headers, paths, and script locations. The webserver creates all this information. You can use an array to get details of a specific location, like PHP_SELF, SCRIPT_NAME, DOCUMENT_ROOT, etc.

DOCUMENT_ROOT in PHP

It’s not advisable to set the static path for any file because the change of root path will lead to a failure if the path inside the script is not changed. $_SERVER contains information about the document root directory under which the current script is executing. It is accessible via the variable DOCUMENT_ROOT, as defined in the server’s configuration file. This is the path where your application code is stored.

The main difference between DOCUMENT_ROOT & / in HTML file is that it first renders an actual file path & later renders the root of the server URL. So if you want a file path relative to the server, you need to add $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']./'helloworld.html' but if you want it relative to your website, just use /helloworld.html.

Example code:

<?php 
    echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; 
?>

Output:

C:/xampp/www/