How to go up a level in the src path of a URL in HTML?

Question

I am storing style sheets in {root}/styles while images in {root}/images for a website. How do I give the path in the style sheets to go look in the images directory for the specified images?

e.g. In background-image: url('/images/bg.png');

Rahn

Answer 1

Use .. to indicate the parent directory:

background-image: url('../images/bg.png');

Ation

I read that elsewhere as well- but it doesn't work! (at least in Chrome) – Rahn

It does. However note that the location is relative to the CSS file's location, not the document embedding the CSS file. – Bridesmaid

@Bridesmaid It should be if we're using only inline CSS – Hargreaves

Answer 2

Here is all you need to know about relative file paths:

• Starting with / returns to the root directory and starts there

• Starting with ../ moves one directory backward and starts there

• Starting with ../../ moves two directories backward and starts there (and so on...)

• To move forward, just start with the first sub directory and keep moving forward.

Click here for more details!

Mccollum

Answer 3

Use ../:

background-image: url('../images/bg.png');

You can use that as often as you want, e.g. ../../images/ or even at different positions, e.g. ../images/../images/../images/ (same as ../images/ of course)

Bridesmaid

Answer 4

In Chrome when you load a website from some HTTP server both absolute paths (e.g. /images/sth.png) and relative paths to some upper level directory (e.g. ../images/sth.png) work.

But!

When you load (in Chrome!) a HTML document from local filesystem you cannot access directories above current directory. I.e. you cannot access ../something/something.sth and changing relative path to absolute or anything else won't help.

Cnemis

Upon rechecking, I can report that the local file system relative-paths by using ../ do work fine - or at least does work fine in this specific case! – Rahn

It does work on linux and windows, not on mac (my experience) – Restoration

Links do not count here, as there is no same origin check for them. Also this answer is 6 years old so browsers may have changed a lot. – Cnemis

Answer 5

If you store stylesheets/images in a folder so that multiple websites can use them, or you want to re-use the same files on another site on the same server, I have found that my browser/Apache does not allow me to go to any parent folder above the website root URL. This seems obvious for security reasons - one should not be able to browse around on the server any place other than the specified web folders.

Eg. does not work: www.mywebsite.com/../images

As a workaround, I use Symlinks:

Go to the directory of www.mywebsite.com Run the command ln -s ../images images

Now www.mywebsite.com/images will point to www.mywebsite.com/../images

Claud

what is symlinks? – Astonish

"A symlink (also called a symbolic link) is a type of file in Linux that points to another file or a folder on your computer. Symlinks are similar to shortcuts in Windows. Some people call symlinks "soft links" – a type of link in Linux/UNIX systems – as opposed to "hard links." " ------ from freecodecamp.org/news/… – Claud

Answer 6

Supposing you have the following file structure:

-css
  --index.css
-images
  --image1.png
  --image2.png
  --image3.png

In CSS you can access image1, for example, using the line ../images/image1.png.

NOTE: If you are using Chrome, it may doesn't work and you will get an error that the file could not be found. I had the same problem, so I just deleted the entire cache history from chrome and it worked.

Luralurch

Answer 7

if you want to go to the root of the folder use / or ctrl+space if you want to go to the back folder use ../ and ctrl+space if it dont suggest and not use the live server if you use the ../

Cummins