PHP Include not showing in design view

Question

One of the advantages of Dreamweaver is the ability to see
the result of your code in the Design view. I am building a
template set for a web site I'm starting, and will be using the
template files in various paths and path depths. As a result, I am
not interested in using relative paths for things like PHP
includes.
If I use the following code for an include, the 'main.php'
file is included in the design view:
<?php include('/includes/templates/main.php'); ?>
When uploaded to the Apache server, this does not display
properly, because it is looking for the file in the user root, not
the Apache document root.
The portable code solutions to this would be to use the
following code:
<?php
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/includes/templates/main.php');
?>
This shows perfectly when uploaded to the Apache server, but
of course does not show in the Design view of Dreamweaver.
It is ridiculous to think that someone would want code one
way to see in the design view, and another for the web server, so I
am assuming that there is a way to do this so that it works both in
the desing view and on the web server.
I have had limited success using:
<?php virtual('/includes/templates/main.php'); ?>
which shows up in both the design view and on the web server.
However, I've experienced problems using virtual calls in scripts
called by the virtual command. I.e. nested inclusions. It would be
important to note that PHP's own documentation states "This
function may be used on PHP files. However, it is typically better
to use include() or require() for PHP files.", along with other
warnings.
So, basically, what I am asking for is a solution to allow
the following code to work and show the included file in the design
view:
<?php
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/includes/templates/main.php');
?>
Any suggestions?
BTW, I have tried setting the PHP include_path to the web
root so that the first example above would work. Doesn't work. I
have full, unrestricted access to the server, so if there is
another setting or configuration change I can make to have the
include function default to the web root, I'd love to know what it
is.

Answer 1

quote:
Originally posted by:
Newsgroup User
It does that with all server-side includes, not just PHP. It
only shows
the HTML content of includes. To see dynamic output from a
server-side
language, you need to use Live Data view.
I'm not referencing dynamic output from PHP processing. I am
referencing includes. When using an include, Dreamweaver shows you
exactly what it would show you if you were looking at the included
file itself.
However, Dreamweaver makes the assumption that <?php
include('/inc/test.php'); ?> is a path located in the web server
document root. This is not the same assumption that web servers
make.
The Apache web server (at least the several that I use),
treat this same include as a request for /inc/test.php off of the
root of the server. To achieve the same include, relative to the
web document root, the include must be <?php
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/inc/test.php'); ?>.
Unfortunately, Dreamweaver does not understand this basic syntax
and will not show the included file in the design view.
The bottom line is that Dreamweaver could make it much
simpler to build portable code if it understood this syntax on the
include. You could take place that include in any location on your
site and it would pull the include from the proper location in both
your design view and on the web server.
Keep in mind that we establish a "document_root" when we set
up a site in Dreamweaver. The information is already there. The
handling of it just needs to be added to the include parser.