get_home_path()

Introduction#

Get the absolute filesystem path to the root of the WordPress installation.

Parameters#

Please keep in mind the difference between ABSPATH and get_home_path() if you have WordPress installed in a subfolder.

The get_home_path() function will always return a path without the subfolder:

• https://www.example.com - /var/www/htdocs/example
• https://www.example.com/wp - /var/www/htdocs/example

This is how it differs from ABSPATH, which will return different values:

• https://www.example.com - /var/www/htdocs/example
• https://www.example.com/wp - /var/www/htdocs/example/wp

ABSPATH is first defined in wp-load.php which will be located at /var/www/htdocs/example/wp/wp-load.php hence this is where ABSPATH will take its definition from.

get_home_path() checks if the site_url and home_url differ, and removes the substring from the path. Otherwise it returns ABSPATH value:

function get_home_path() {
    $home    = set_url_scheme( get_option( 'home' ), 'http' );
    $siteurl = set_url_scheme( get_option( 'siteurl' ), 'http' );
    if ( ! empty( $home ) && 0 !== strcasecmp( $home, $siteurl ) ) {
        $wp_path_rel_to_home = str_ireplace( $home, '', $siteurl ); /* $siteurl - $home */
        $pos = strripos( str_replace( '\\', '/', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] ), trailingslashit( $wp_path_rel_to_home ) );
        $home_path = substr( $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'], 0, $pos );
        $home_path = trailingslashit( $home_path );
    } else {
        $home_path = ABSPATH;
    }

    return str_replace( '\\', '/', $home_path );
}

Using it in your code

Calling get_home_path() must be done in a context where wp-admin/includes/file.php has already been included.

For example using get_home_path() within the admin_init hook is fine, but using it within the init is not and will result in a PHP fatal error:

Call to undefined function get_home_path()

This file only gets included from within the admin (dashboard) context, if you absolutely need it outside of this context you will need to include the file yourself before calling the function:

require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/file.php');

Usage

$path = get_home_path();

Return value:

string

Full filesystem path to the root of the WordPress installation, even if it’s installed in a subfolder.

Example:

/var/www/htdocs/example