When included.php is not there(customizing or redirection)

PHP
1

I have 2 php files, ie. include.php and included.php.

<?php
include 'included.php';
?>

The above is all code in include.php
And the below is all code in included.php.

Yes, this is included.php.

If a user opens include.php, the browsing result would be the following.

So far so good.

Let’s suppose there is no included.php in the server,

If a user opens include.php, the browsing result would be the following…

I like to make the browsing result of “include.php” like the following instead of “Warning”.

or

2

You can have:-

if(!include 'included.php'){
    // Do something else
}

But it will still generate a warning if it does not find the file.

3

You could check if your include file exists with file_exists().

4

That works… If you also want to avoid showing the generated warning, you can use ini_set to temporarily turn off display_errors:

Something tlike this:

$display_errors = ini_get('display_errors'); // get the initial value
ini_set('display_errors',0); // turn off error display for this statement
if (!include 'included.php') {
   ini_set('display_errors',$display_errors); // reset error displays to its initial value
   echo "Sorry! We have technical problems. Please try it later.";
} else {
   ini_set('display_errors',$display_errors); // reset error displays to its initial value
}

The documentation for display_errors doesn’t mention it, but that setting turns off warnings, too (IME).

$display_errors returns to its initial value after the script is run, but to be safe, it’s better to reset it immediately, I think.

file_exists() may also be a good one to use, but keep in mind that the include_path should be searched.

5

The usual thing is in a development environment: display the errors.
On a live site: log the errors.

But really I don’t like it when you have code that you know may cause errors or warnings, it seems wrong.

Again I think it’s a case of knowing what the context of the question is, what problem are you trying to solve?
In a situaltion where you are expecting that a file may not exist, you should be checking with file_exists.

	if(file_exists('included.php')){
		include 'included.php' ;
	}
	else{
		// Do something else
	}

If you find you are doing this a lot it want’s wrapping in a function.

6

Oh yes I agree with you 100% @SamA74. The use case here is strange to me - an include file which may or may not be there. Never seen that one before! :slight_smile: I am curious to know more details, if @joon1 would provide them.

7

There’s a problem with using file_exists; it doesn’t check your include path. Here’s an example. Suppose my PHP include path is /usr/share/php/ and I do have a file there called b.php. I also have a file called a.php which is located in the same directory as my include.php file, under my Apache document root.

Then suppose I put this code into my include.php file:

<?php
include('a.php');
include('b.php');
echo "a.php exists: " . file_exists('a.php') . "<br>";
echo "b.php exists: " . file_exists('b.php') . "<br>";
?>

The output will be:

a.php exists: 1
b.php exists:

Even though b.php exists, file_exists('b.php') returns FALSE because file_exists does not search the php_includes path, which may be a list of multiple directories. If you want to use file_exists, you’ll have to loop over all the directories in the PHP include path when searching for it.

This is probably being nitpicky; maybe in @joon1’s case, it’s known that the include file will be found in exactly one place. In my experience, include files are located in multiple different directories.

8

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