Get the current path url in php

Directory handling in PHP is pretty much the same and easier as in C. To fetch the current working directory in PHP – dirname( __FILE__ ) will do, but to fetch the current path url we need to rely on $_SERVER, which holds all the information like host name, currently executing script, protocol ( http or https ) and so on. You can find tons of manual on this $_SERVER, so I am not going to write another manual page for this PHP variable. I have written a function that will return the current path url as I did earlier with JQuery – ( get the path of executed JS file ).

Here is the few lines of code written as a function so you can call wherever you want.

function my_url(){

    $url = (!empty($_SERVER['HTTPS'])) ? "https://".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] : "http://".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

    return $url;
}

Now call your function like this

$url = my_url();

This will return the current path url. I have also extended this basic function into a PHP class that gives you more option in url manipulation.

class myUrl
{
    var $protocol;
    var $site;
    var $thisfile;
    var $real_directories;
    var $num_of_real_directories;
    var $virtual_directories = array();
    var $num_of_virtual_directories = array();
    var $baseurl;
    var $thisurl;
    function myUrl()
    {
        $this->protocol = ( isset( $_SERVER["HTTPS"] ) && strtolower( $_SERVER["HTTPS"] ) == "on" ) ? 'https' : 'http';
        $this->site = $this->protocol . '://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
        $this->thisfile = basename($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']);
        $this->real_directories = $this->cleanUp(explode("/", str_replace($this->thisfile, "", $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'])));
        $this->num_of_real_directories = count($this->real_directories);
        $this->virtual_directories = array_diff($this->cleanUp(explode("/", str_replace($this->thisfile, "", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']))),$this->real_directories);
        $this->num_of_virtual_directories = count($this->virtual_directories);
        $this->baseurl = $this->site . "/" . implode("/", $this->real_directories) ;
        $this->thisurl = $this->baseurl . implode("/", $this->virtual_directories) ;
			if( strcmp ( substr( $this->thisurl, -1 ), "/" ) != 0 )
				$this->thisurl = $this->thisurl."/";
			if( strcmp ( substr( $this->baseurl, -1 ), "/" ) != 0 )
				$this->baseurl = $this->baseurl."/";
    }
    function cleanUp($array)
    {
        $cleaned_array = array();
        foreach($array as $key => $value)
        {
            $qpos = strpos($value, "?");
            if($qpos !== false)
            {
                break;
            }
            if($key != "" && $value != "")
            {
                $cleaned_array[] = $value;
            }
        }
        return $cleaned_array;
    }
}

This class can return base url, current path url, executing script, hostname, protocol (http or https) etc. This is basically using the $_SERVER variable to manipulate the path and url.

You create an instance for this class and access the values like this

$dir = new myUrl( );

	echo "This url: ".$dir->thisurl;
	print "<br />";
	echo "Site: ".$dir->site;
	print "<br />";
	echo "This file: ".$dir->thisfile;

You can put this whole class into a php file and include it wherever you want, it will make easier for you in url manipulation within php.