Dynamic URL for includes

[roscoedesign]

I'm including my header in every page of my site and I would like a way to dynamically make sure its always working without changing anything. I was using:

$doc_root = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
include_once ("$doc_root/includes/header.php"); 

but since my site is in a sub domain it doesn't work. It works locally because its in the DocumentRoot but when I upload it to my remote site in the sub domain it skips over some of the folders because document_root only returns the address up to the DocumentRoot. Is there a better way to do this?

[World Wide Weird]

Use the absolute file path, or add the absolute path to your INCLUDE_PATH.

[logic_earth]

<?php

#Subdomain
$root = dirname($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']) . '/';
include($root . 'includes/file.ext');

[earl-grey]

You can have a constant on top of each file, like:

$root_path = '../'; // Script root directory is one level higher 

Such technique is used by phpBB.

[roscoedesign]

Thanks for all of the help. I am going to try these out and get back to which one works the best for what I am looking for. Thank you.