drupal_get_path

5 common.inc	`drupal_get_path($type, $name)`
6 common.inc	`drupal_get_path($type, $name)`
7 common.inc	`drupal_get_path($type, $name)`
8 common.inc	`drupal_get_path($type, $name)`

Returns the path to a system item (module, theme, etc.).

Parameters

$type: The type of the item (i.e. theme, theme_engine, module, profile).

$name: The name of the item for which the path is requested.

Return value

The path to the requested item.

File

includes/common.inc, line 1752: Common functions that many Drupal modules will need to reference.

Code

function drupal_get_path($type, $name) {
  return dirname(drupal_get_filename($type, $name));
}

Comments

use dirname(FILE) for better performance

Posted by seanburlington on March 7, 2010 at 10:09pm

If you need to refer to other files within the same module.

<?php
dirname(__FILE__); 
?>

doesn't require a database hit so has better performance

It's a good idea to:

Posted by rimian on October 5, 2010 at 6:13am

Program to an interface not an implementation. That's the whole point of this function. :)

Clarifying DB hits...

Posted by mikeker on April 12, 2010 at 9:08pm

Just to clarify a few points about seanburlington comment on database hits:

drupal_get_filename statically caches its results so you only have a DB hit on the first drupal_get_path call for a given module or theme.
global $theme_path; is a quick way to get at the path to the current theme without hitting the DB.
You can often use relative paths within a module. Use dirname(__FILE__) when you need the whole path.

Return Value

Posted by EvanDonovan on July 9, 2010 at 5:40pm

The path returned by this function will be relative to the DocumentRoot in which Drupal is running.

if trying to include a template from a subfolder in your module

Posted by drupal_pupil on August 31, 2010 at 6:50pm

you may not need to use the path argument of the hook_theme(), instead you can just prefix the value of the template string with the name of the subfolder that contains the template

'template' => 'templates/mymoduletemplate' ,
etc...

In action

Posted by Aple on September 1, 2010 at 4:37pm

Had some problems with this. Here's a simple way to use this:

<?php
    function my_path() {
        return drupal_get_path('theme', 'YourThemeName');
    }
?>
<img src="<?php echo my_path(); ?>/img/test.jpg">

You can condense this down further and include it in a header that's required on every page and end up with a relative path variable like:

<?php echo p(); ?>/img/test.jpg

Hope this helps someone.

Even better...

Posted by teodor.sandu on August 9, 2011 at 9:23am

It's usually best to avoid calling functions in .tpl files (excepting the obvious use-cases of course).
In this case, why don't you add a variable to all page templates via template_preprocess_page() to hold your relative path?
This would condense all those function calls into just one, or none if you write the p() function contents inside your _preprocess_page() function.

What i mean is writing this in template.php:

<?php
function mytheme_preprocess_page(&$vars){
  $vars['p'] = drupal_get_path('theme', 'mytheme');
}
?>

This avoids all those function calls (since the function above is called only once!), and in your .tpl file you'd have something like this:

<?php echo $p; ?>/img/test.jpg

Note that the function call has been replaced by a variable, thus making it even better, right?

Cheers

Remember that the $name

Posted by delta62 on November 17, 2010 at 11:54pm

Remember that the $name variable is the machine-readable name, which is the name of your .info file, not the human-readable name contained in the .info file. So, for a theme, if your info file is called mytheme.info, and the name variable within that file is My Theme Name, use mytheme for the $name variable.

Cross link: path_to_theme()

Posted by doublejosh on December 28, 2010 at 2:05am

Cross linking to function for current theme...

path_to_theme()