and pages such as

http://<host>/<installation_path>/subfolder1/subfolder2/page.php

You have a file called config.php in <installation_path> which is include()d by all pages (in subfolders or not).

How to work out <installation_path> without hard-coding it into a config file?

<?php

// this is config.php, and it is in <installation_path>
// it is included by <installation_path>/page.php
// it is included by <installation_path>/subfolder/page2.php
// etc

$_REAL_SCRIPT_DIR = realpath(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])); // filesystem path of this page's directory (page.php)
$_REAL_BASE_DIR = realpath(dirname(__FILE__)); // filesystem path of this file's directory (config.php)
$_MY_PATH_PART = substr( $_REAL_SCRIPT_DIR, strlen($_REAL_BASE_DIR)); // just the subfolder part between <installation_path> and the page

$INSTALLATION_PATH = $_MY_PATH_PART
    ? substr( dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']), 0, -strlen($_MY_PATH_PART) )
    : dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'])
; // we subtract the subfolder part from the end of <installation_path>, leaving us with just <installation_path> :)

?>
todd dot kisov at yahoo dot com
03-Apr-2006 05:11
To convert query string parameter values ($_GET, $_REQUEST), which include escaped Unicode values resulting from applying the javascript "escape" function to a Unicode string (%uNNNN%uNNNN%uNNNN) fast and simple is to use PECL JSON extension:

function JavaScript_Unicode_URL_2_Str($js_uni_str) {
        $res = preg_replace('/%u([[:alnum:]]{4})/', '\\u\1', $js_uni_str);
        $res = str_replace('"', '\"', $res); // if in str "
        $res = json_decode('["'.$res.'"]'); // JavaScrip array with string element
        $res = $res[0];
        $res = iconv('UTF-8', ini_get('default_charset'), $res);
        return $res;
    }
01-Apr-2006 01:56
I was unable to convince my hosting company to change their installation of PHP and therefore had to find my own way to computer $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"].  I eventually settled on the following, which is a combination of earlier notes (with some typos corrected):

<?php
if ( ! isset($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] ) )
  $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = str_replace( '\\', '/', substr(
    $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'], 0, 0-strlen($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']) ) );
?>
mjs at beebo dot org
30-Mar-2006 05:24
Note that PHP_SELF will not be equal to REQUEST_URI under Apache if mod_rewrite has been used to move one URL to another--PHP_SELF will contain the rewritten address, and REQUEST_URI will contain the URL the user sees in their browser.
adam3000 at gmail dot com
16-Mar-2006 02:30
I was trying to find an alternative to $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] for a Windows NT set up and the ones below didn't really work for me so here's my solution using eustf at hotmail dot com's suggestion of $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']: