How to reference CSS file so it can be found using an include in PHP

Question

I'm trying to create a php file which I want to include in various other php file and I am trying to add references to my CSS files but I'm having problems due to my directory structure. Off the root folder I have 3 folders, admin, includes and styles. The CSS files are located in styles folder and any files that I will include in pages are located in the includes folder. My problem is that I can't figure out how to ensure my CSS files are found, at present if I specify the location of the css files based on the root the files won't be found from the pages in the sub folders. I've tried solutions I found online including $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] and $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] without success and I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or what else to try. I'm completely new to PHP so any help would be greatly appreciated. Below is my code. Thanks

    <head>
<?php
    $server = 'http://'.$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'];

?>
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
        <title>Document</title>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $server . '/2025/styles/reset.css' ?>";
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $server . '/2025/styles/normalize.css' ?>";
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $server . '/2025/styles/characters.css' ?>";

</head>

Jonathan Kuhn · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-11 23:53:54Z

1

Drop the $server variable and use a relative root URL. If the path to your file starts with a / that means to start at right after the domain and go under that path structure. For example:

Given this HTML element:

<link rel="/styles/reset.css">

On the domain example.com it refers to a file at http://example.com/styles/reset.css.
On the domain whatever.com it refers to a file at http://whatever.com/styles/reset.css.

The URL to the file is "relative" to the "root" of your URL.

answered Jul 11, 2017 at 23:53

Jonathan Kuhn

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Peter Featherstone · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-11 23:45:56Z

0

There are a couple of issues here.

The first is that using $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] means you are relying on your server configuration. It probably makes more sense to use $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] instead for this. A list of all $_SERVER options can be found here.

The second problem is that your HTML is not valid. You are not closing your link elements properly. You are using a semi colon incorrectly, they should look as below:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $server . '/2025/styles/reset.css' ?>" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $server . '/2025/styles/normalize.css' ?>" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo $server . '/2025/styles/characters.css' ?>" />

answered Jul 11, 2017 at 23:45

Peter Featherstone

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