MODx nested includes tip

- 24,544 Posts
BobRay Reply #11, 18 years, 10 months ago
Quote from: OpenGeek at Dec 02, 2007, 07:26 PM

No, base_path will never be an empty string; it should always mirror MODX_BASE_PATH which is a constant.

I certainly would have thought so, but when I moved veriword.php to my snippet directory and put this code at the top:
```
require "../../../manager/includes/config.inc.php"; // required for $modx to work
$spformPath = "assets/snippets/spform/";  
require $modx->config['base_path'].$spformPath."spfconfig.cfg.php";
```
The first require succeeds but the second fails. When I tested $modx->config[’base_path’] there, it was definitely an empty string. Maybe there’s something I’m missing (there often is ).

Maybe there’s something wrong with my test of $modx->config[’base_path’]. I couldn’t use any output there, so I put this code just below the code above:

if (strlen($modx->config[’base_path’]) >= 1) {
exit;
}
The file exits and no image is produced unless I change ">=1" to "<1", then it runs fine.
Using MODX_BASE_PATH gives the same result.

The veriword file is accessed by a URL in an img tag.

Looking at config.inc.php, it appears that $base_path could be set to "" and MODX_BASE_PATH is then set to $base_path:
```
$base_path= $pth . (substr($pth, -1) != "/" && substr($pth, -1) != "\\" ? "/" : "");
if (!defined('MODX_BASE_PATH')) define('MODX_BASE_PATH', $base_path);
```
I’m sure this could never happen in a regular snippet but it looks like the way this code is accessed via an img tag, makes the first part of the $base_path conditional false.

Bob
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- MODX Staff
- 10,725 Posts
opengeek Reply #12, 18 years, 10 months ago
That’s an error in the way that specific piece of code works and a separate issue. Including the config file like this is hackish at best and a workaround for several features in the current code that require requests directly to a resource. Another of the reasons I endeavored to re-engineer the core. But anyway, the real issue here is two-fold:
- including the config.inc.php file does not give you access to a $modx object¹
- to be safer (and faster), certain variables need to be defined first before including the config file, as occurs in the index.php file (see code below for example)
```
<?php
// initialize the variables prior to grabbing the config file
$database_type = '';
$database_server = '';
$database_user = '';
$database_password = '';
$dbase = '';
$table_prefix = '';
$base_url = '';
$base_path = '';

// grab the config file
include(dirname(__FILE__).'/manager/includes/config.inc.php');
?>
```
Following the execution of that code, you have access to those variables and any defined in the config file itself; this includes the constants (e.g. MODX_BASE_PATH). But $modx simply doesn’t exist at that point.

¹ -- As of 0.9.6.1, you should be able to access the $modx object very easily, by simply defining MODX_API_MODE as true and including the MODx index.php file (no including the config file or defining variables required), e.g.
```
<?php
// your code here

define('MODX_API_MODE', true);
include(dirname(__FILE__) . '/index.php');

// your code with access to $modx here
?>
```
Jason Coward
Chief Architect @ MODX
http://www.jasoncoward.com | http://twitter.com/drumshaman | https://github.com/opengeek