How to find absolute path of a file on the server with the help of PHP function

[Rixwel]

Which method or function should I used to find the absolute path of a file on the server in PHP ?. I have tried out some function in my programming classes to find out the file server it works fine but now when I finding out which are those functions or methods I am unable to find it out. Please let me know which are those functions or any other way to handle the same problem.

[Vitus]

Following is the method where it will help to find the absolute path of a file on the server, you need to keep this file at the httdocs to run the same file.

<?php
$p = getcwd();
echo $p;
?>

Ans: getcwd()

Here I have stored my files under httdocs (using php5,i haven't checked under php4) so I get the output as C:\apache2triad\htdocs you may get your path information while runnings the above code.

[Justvicks]

In PHP to keep the file at the root mode you need to use the function naming convention like this, echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']; It return the file system path to your root directory by examining a server variable.

You may also use the following method i.e echo getcwd(); This will return the file system path to the directory that run this command.

echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; It return the Absolute Path to the file.

[X-Ray]

The absolute path of your local server and the real server might be different. So to get the absolute path for both version, you can take the help of the magic constant called __FILE__ and dirname() function available in PHP.

The $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] doesn't return that, it only return the URI part, e.G.

If url = 'http://site.Com/abc/def.Php'

$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] returns '/abc/def.Php', this is definitely not absolute path
(tested under PHP 4.X)