includes and paths and organization

My solution is to make the link the full path with http://mysite.com
and so on so regardless of where the header is called from the link is
good. I always thought that relative paths are used within a site and
full paths to link outside. My solution will work but I think there is
a better way.

Hi all,
>
Trying to work out a few problems in using php on my site. Partially
this is a html question. I was reading a lot of the posts and it seems
that some of the includes people are using are very complicated because
of sessions or id's and variables I don't really know. So...
>
Right now i use php for includes and getting some lists I make using
mySQL and phpmyadmin and can get those out without error. For the most
part a lot of my files were in the main directory with my index.php like
header.php and footer.php but I just realized when I use these header
and footer files from a different directory the paths are wrong. I was
doing the includes like:
<?php include("header.php"); ?Links are good
<?php include("../header.php"); ?Links are bad
<?php include("../../header.php"); ?Links are bad
The linked file in the header file would be at the same level as index
but now as I have added pages I have made folders to keep things
organized. My goal is to call my header or footer file from any level
folder from an includes folder.
<?php include("includes/header.php"); ?being called from collies in
mysite/pets/dogs or whatever.
>
My solution is to make the link the full path with http://mysite.com and
so on so regardless of where the header is called from the link is good.
I always thought that relative paths are used within a site and full
paths to link outside. My solution will work but I think there is a
better way.
>
So should I have my include files at the same level as my index file? or
in a folder?
Use full path?
And should these include files use a .inc extension instead of php?
>
Sorry this is a bit long for such a simple topic but I have to get
organized. :)
>
thx..ron
>
>

I prefer making one or two directories where I store my includes, and
simply add them to the include path. This makes things easy to manage.
>
You can use ini_set, eg:
$newIncludePath =
get_include_path().PATH_SEPARATOR.'/home/bla/public_html/includes';
>
ini_set("include_path",$newIncludePath);
>
>
You only need 1 file you include everywhere in all your scripts that
contains this, and you are fine.
If you ever move your directorytree, just adjust the path.
>
Now you can simply include everything that is stored under
/home/bla/public_html/includes, and also its subdirectories (if you
name them during your include).
>

>
Nope, the beautiful thing is it works on any server where PHP is loaded
as a non-cgi.