What are best practices for organizing and including external files in PHP scripts?
When organizing and including external files in PHP scripts, it is important to follow best practices to maintain a clean and organized codebase. One common approach is to create a separate directory for external files, such as includes/, and include them using relative paths. Additionally, using PHP's include() or require() functions can help ensure that external files are properly included without causing errors.
// Example of including an external file using relative path
include 'includes/header.php';
```
```php
// Example of including an external file using require_once to avoid multiple inclusions
require_once 'includes/config.php';