-----Original Message----- From: Clancy [mailto:clancy_1@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: 21 August 2009 01:26 PM To: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Invoking functions stored in a separate directory? I am developing an idea for a website engine which can be shared between several different websites. Each website would have its own directory under a common root directory, and the engine would be in a separate directory Engine: Root Website_1.com, Website_2.com, Engine The website directories would each contain the design data for that website, consisting basically of a mixture of text files and images. The various pages would be loaded by loading index.php from the website root directory, and specifying a number of parameters e.g. http://www.corybas.com/index.php?path=Holidays&level=0&item=0 I have the minimum amount of code in index.php -- just enough to set some parameters to identify the website, and then include ../Engine/Main_prog.php. This in turn can include any of a large number of other include files to carry out particular functions. I have the prototype working nicely on my PC, and on a stand-alone basis on a server, but now I am trying to upload the multi-website version to a public host, and am encountering a number of problems, mainly because I have never done any serious work with UNIX, and the host support staff don't understand what I am trying to do. The problems mainly relate to setting permissions to allow the website to access the engine code. I only have a rough idea of how the permissions work, but I think that to include engine code the website has to have read and execute rights to it, and I also think that so far as the engine is concerned the website will count as 'other'. (I can easily arrange that all temporary files are written in the website directory.) I suspect that rather than including the engine code in index.php, it would be better to call functions in it, so that the website only required 'execute' rights, but I don't know of any way to do this without having anything running permanently on the server. Can anyone suggest how it can be done? --------- Using include ../Engine/Main_prog.php won't work for you in a production environment. You need to create a path.php file that defines the absolute path to the engine for each website, and include it at the top of your website script. Then you can do something like: include ENGINEPATH."Main_prog.php"; You can have different path files, one for dev and one for live, that allows you to use the same scripts for both environments and just use the appropriate path definition script. E.g. Windows path.php define('ENGINEPATH','../Engine/'); Linux path.php define('ENGINEPATH','/usr/home/Engine/'); You shouldn't really have permission problems as long as your website and engine are on the same server. I do something similar where the bulk of my code is below doc root, and I use path files to find the main system directories. The beauty of it is you can change your mind about directory structures, and just change the path file definitions without making any changes in the application code (my path file defines about 20 directories). It also lets you do dev on a Windows pc and deploy on a *nix box without any problems - just use a different path file for each. One other advantage it will give you for your particualr design is that you can have multiple engines per server (e.g. Engine1, Engine2, etc) so that you can bring one engine down for upgrade while still keeping sites running on the other engines. Cheers Arno -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
