Science, Tech, Math Computer Science Finding the PHP Document Root Finding the PHP Document Root on Apache and IIS Servers Share Flipboard Email Print Kohei Hara/Getty Images Computer Science PHP Programming Language Basics Tutorials MySQL Commands Perl Programming Language Python Programming Java Programming JavaScript Programming Delphi Programming C & C++ Programming Ruby Programming Visual Basic View More by Angela Bradley Updated August 20, 2017 The PHP document root is the folder where a PHP script is running. When installing a script, web developers often need to know the document root. Although many pages scripted with PHP run on an Apache server, some run under Microsoft IIS on Windows. Apache includes an environment variable called DOCUMENT_ROOT, but IIS doesn't. As a result, there are two methods for locating the PHP document root.Finding the PHP Document Root Under ApacheInstead of emailing tech support for the document root and waiting for someone to respond, you can use a simple PHP script with getenv (), which provides a shortcut on Apache servers to the document root. These few lines of code return the document root.Finding the PHP Document Root Under IISMicrosoft's Internet Information Services was introduced with Windows NT 3.5.1 and has been included in most Windows releases since then—including Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10. It does not supply a shortcut to the document root.To find the name of the currently executing script in IIS, begin with this code: print getenv ("SCRIPT_NAME");which returns a result similar to: /product/description/index.phpwhich is the full path of the script. You don't want the full path, just the name of the file for SCRIPT_NAME. To get it use: print realpath(basename(getenv("SCRIPT_NAME")));which returns a result in this format: /usr/local/apache/share/htdocs/product/description/index.phpTo remove the code referring to the site-relative file and arrive at the document root, use the following code at the beginning of any script that needs to know the document root. $localpath=getenv("SCRIPT_NAME"); $absolutepath=realpath($localPath); // fix the Windows slashes $absolutepath=str_replace("\\","/",$absolutepath); $docroot=substr($absolutepath,0,strpos($absolutepath, $localpath)); // an example of use include($docroot."/includes/config.php");This method, although more complex, runs on both IIS and Apache servers. citecite this article Format mla apa chicago Your Citation Bradley, Angela. "Finding the PHP Document Root." ThoughtCo, Aug. 20, 2017, thoughtco.com/finding-the-document-root-2693942. Bradley, Angela. (2017, August 20). Finding the PHP Document Root. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/finding-the-document-root-2693942 Bradley, Angela. "Finding the PHP Document Root." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/finding-the-document-root-2693942 (accessed April 22, 2018). copy citation Continue Reading