How to Get Current Directory Name and Path in PHP

1. Use the getcwd() Function to Get the Current Directory Name in PHP
2. Use the dirname() Function to Get the Current Directory Name in PHP
3. Use the basename() Function to Get the Current Directory Name in PHP

This article will introduce a few methods to get the current working directory name in PHP.

Use the getcwd() Function to Get the Current Directory Name in PHP

The getcwd() function gives the current working directory. The returned value is a string on success.

The function does not take any parameters. The function returns false in case of failure.

Let’s consider the following directory structure.

├── var
│ └── www
│ └── html
| └──project
| └──index.php

The PHP file lies inside the project directory. The getcwd() function will return the name of the current working directory, which is project.

We can use the echo function to display the content of the function. We can see in the output section that the getcwd() function returns the current working directory with its path.

echo getcwd();

Output:

/var/www/html/project

Use the dirname() Function to Get the Current Directory Name in PHP

We can also use the dirname() function to get the current directory name in PHP. The function returns the path of the parent directory.

It accepts two parameters where the first one is the path and the second one is levels. Levels indicate the number of directories to move up.

Finally, we can use the __FILE__ magic constants in the dirname() function to get the name of the current directory. The __FILE__ constant returns the full path of the current file along with the file name.

We can demonstrate these constants and the function in the above directory structure. For example, we get the following result when we echo the __FILE__ constant from the index.php file.

echo __FILE__;

Output:

/var/www/html/project/index.php

For example, write the dirname() function in the index.php file with the __FILE__ constant as the parameter.

echo dirname(__FILE__);

Output:

/var/www/html/project

In this way, we can get the current working directory name in PHP.

Use the basename() Function to Get the Current Directory Name in PHP

We can use the basename() function to get the current working directory name without the path in PHP. We can apply this function with the result of the above two functions.

The basename() function returns the name of the base file or folder from the given path. For example, if the path provided is /var/www/html/project, the output will be project.

For example, use the functions dirname(__FILE__) and getcwd() as the parameters for the basename() function. In this way, we can get the current working directory name in PHP.

echo basename(dirname(__FILE__))."<br>";
echo basename(getcwd())."\n";

Output:

project
project