Is there a PHP call for "current url" string?

[jyeager11]

Is there such a thing as a variable that can be included in a PHP document that would translate into the full url of the current page?

For example, at the bottom of every CNN news article, there's a Facebook link designed to share the URL of the current page on Facebook. I doubt this link is hard-coded. That's got to be a variable.

How would I go about doing that? In other words, to replace this :

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://domain.com/file.php">

With this :

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=('$CURRENT_URL')">

(Or something like that.)

What would the syntax be?

[David_Powers · Accepted solution]

mjyeager wrote:

Is there such a thing as a variable that can be included in a PHP document that would translate into the full url of the current page?

Yes. $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].

[jyeager11]

Hi David,

How would you incorporate this into a static link?

For instance, to submit a url to Facebook, one would use the format :

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://domain.com/folder/file.html

So my first instinct (as a total n00b) was to do this :

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ?>">Submit to Facebook</a>

Which doesn't work. I also tried :

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']">Submit to Facebook</a>

Which didn't work either.

What would be the correct syntax for a static link that would submit different urls depending on what page is using said link?

Thanks.

[David_Powers]

$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] is a variable like any other. It contains a value that's ready for you to use, but it doesn't do anything by itself. If you want to display that value, you need to use echo.

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">Submit to Facebook</a>

[jyeager11]

That worked. Except it did not refer the full url. Only the folders + file.

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>">Facebook</a>

Will produce :

http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=/folder/filename.php

Now granted, I can very easily enough hard-code "http://domain.com/" between the u= and the echo, but I was wondering if you had a better way to fo it.

PS: Can I thank you one more time, and point out how many countless hours you've saved me with your help in various threads? Well, even if I can't, I'm going to do so. 😃

[David_Powers]

This should do it, as long as it's supported on your server:

echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'];

Can I thank you one more time, and point out how many countless hours you've saved me with your help in various threads? Well, even if I can't, I'm going to do so. 😃

No problem. I received a lot of help from others when I was learning. There's absolutely no obligation to do so, but if you ever plan to buy anything from Amazon, go through one of the links on my website (http://foundationphp.com/). Amazon pays me a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It helps pay for the upkeep of my site.

[jyeager11]

That string actually fetches "/home/user/domain.com/folder/file.htm" (in other words, the full path on the server, and not the full url of the webpage).

[David_Powers]

Sorry, so it does. I've never had the need to do this before, but the following should do the trick:

echo 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

You'll need to test it on your server. Not all servers support the full range of $_SERVER variables.

[jyeager11]

Worked like a charm! Thanks.