How to use relative/absolute paths in css URLs?

Question

I have a production and development server. The problem is the directory structure.

Development:

• http://dev.com/subdir/images/image.jpg
• http://dev.com/subdir/resources/css/style.css

Production:

• http://live.com/images/image.jpg
• http://live.com/resources/css/style.css

How can I have a style.css in css folder that uses on both servers the same path for the background: url property? Is there a trick I can use with relative paths?

Answer 1

The url is relative to the location of the CSS file, so this should work for you:

url('../../images/image.jpg')

The relative url goes two folders back, and then to the images folder - it should work for both cases, as long as the structure is the same.

From http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1/#url:

Partial URLs are interpreted relative to the source of the style sheet, not relative to the document

Answer 2

Personally, I would fix this in the .htaccess file. You should have access to that.

Define your CSS URL as such:

url(/image_dir/image.png);

In your .htacess file, put:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^image_dir/(.*) subdir/images/$1

or

RewriteRule ^image_dir/(.*) images/$1

depending on the site.

Answer 3

i had the same problem... every time that i wanted to publish my css.. I had to make a search/replace.. and relative path wouldnt work either for me because the relative paths were different from dev to production.

Finally was tired of doing the search/replace and I created a dynamic css, (e.g. www.mysite.com/css.php) it's the same but now i could use my php constants in the css. somethig like

.icon{
  background-image:url('<?php echo BASE_IMAGE;?>icon.png');
}

and it's not a bad idea to make it dynamic because now i could compress it using YUI compressor without loosing the original format on my dev server.

Good Luck!