PHP __DIR__ of file and backup by one directory

Question

I am running a laravel server using PHP 7. I am trying to require a file using the following:

require __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/autoload.php';

The file I am running this script in is located in a folder called public. So therefore __DIR__ should equal:

www.mydomain.com/myserver/public/index.php

The path the script should create should be:

www.mydomain.com/myserver/bootstrap/autoload.php

However, rather than dynamically create the correct path it is treating the "/../" as a literal directory instead of telling it to go back one. So the path I am getting back is:

www.mydomain.com/myserver/public/../bootstrap/autoload.php

Any ides why this could be happening? Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As per my comment;

__DIR__ is the current directory you are in, if you wanted to go back one step, you could use dirname

This is used such as;

dirname(__DIR__);

So, if your current directory is (and is where you actively are):

C:/server/htdocs/system/main/index.php

__DIR__ will give you C:/server/htdocs/system/main and dirname(__DIR__) will give C:/server/htdocs/system/

Therefore, using the following will do what you need;

require(dirname(__DIR__) . "/bootstrap/autoload.php");