PHP absolute server path to website (the easy and fastest way) Here’s a quick note for all those people wondering what the absolute path to their server is. There are many tools and solutions around the Internet that help you find it, as well as php_info() but all of them seem overcomplicated. The easiest and quickest way to do it is by using a simple stupid […]

Here’s a quick note for all those people wondering what the absolute path to their server is. There are many tools and solutions around the Internet that help you find it, as well as php_info() but all of them seem overcomplicated. The easiest and quickest way to do it is by using a simple stupid trick:

Create a PHP file and add some invalid code such as random letters:

Now save your file and upload it to the web server root folder.

Open it with your browser, an error message like this should appear:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/xavi/hello/public_html/test.php on line 2

That’s it! The home path for this example is: /home/xavi/hello/public_html/.

Error not showing?

If you can’t see any errors you may need to enable the debugger by activating/displaying PHP error reporting.

Code to display PHP absolute path

The trick above is for when you can’t be bothered to look it up. If you have the time to copy and paste then this code here is the right one:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL|E_STRICT);
echo getcwd() . "\n";

That’s it, get those 4 lines of code and paste them in a new file.